Why we need effective central government

WILL PODMORE welcomes a strategy that takes us well beyond Labour’s contradictory and limited ambitions for Britain’s future

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IN this book, the authors make a very good case for reindustrialising Britain. We are far too dependent on imported energy, food and manufactured goods.

Britain cannot rebuild national resilience, reduce inequality, or achieve full employment without rebuilding our productive base. Crucial to this is energy sovereignty. Energy’s current high costs and insecurity hurt both our industry and our living standards. Without we control our energy, there can be no reindustrialisation.

But how to progress? As the authors note, Labour’s policy document “The UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy 2025” is not a strategy for growth, but a hopeful shot in the dark. It is based on the belief that private businesses are the dynamic factor of growth and would deliver the desired results if only the government facilitated their operations.

Nor can Britain tackle its productivity problem by further promoting the growth of the financial sector, as the Labour government’s December 2024 Plan for Change absurdly claimed. The country cannot rely on private enterprise, or on finance capital to rebuild industry.

The authors blame the great regional disparities of the country on the power structures of the country concentrating decision-making at Westminster. But we do need national planning to achieve progress. As they later acknowledge, it was under the rule of the market that “national planning and coordination in industry, transport, utilities, food production and welfare services was condemned as centralist.”

We need effective central government to rebuild Britain, to secure national rates and standards of employment, especially industrial employment, and to secure equality of service provision. The national planning that we need cannot come from adding up localisms. A programme of devolution directly contradicts the programme of reindustrialising.

A concerted national effort to rebuild Britain needs central direction. We need an integrated national economy that has national planning at its heart. We need a real national economic plan.

The authors refer to the “breaking up [of] Britain during the past half century through neoliberal policies.” But the breaking up is not the accidental by-product of neoliberal policies. It is a key part of the ruling class’s drive to keep power. Breaking up is also the complete opposite of what we need for reindustrialisation.

As they note: “The collapse of British manufacturing was a class victory for capital.” Deindustrialisation has offshored whole industries, exporting emissions and jobs.

It has harmed the whole working class: they decry “the illusion that productivity and wages in services can rise independently of what happens in manufacturing. They cannot. When manufacturing declines, service employment tends to be low-productivity, low-wage work.”

On top of all this, the ready supply of immigrant labour allowed employers to substitute low-paid workers for capital investment. The system was deliberately structured to make cheap labour preferable to machinery; this limited productivity growth and made it harder for our trade unions to press for higher wages.

Reinforcing the trends of low pay, precarious work and under-resourced public services, “migration functioned as a deliberate strategy by employers, who exploited prevailing labour market conditions.”

Any programme of rebuilding requires that we truly run our own affairs. Self-reliance is necessary. As the authors put it: “Sovereignty is a necessary precondition of policy.”

But by 2022, foreign investors owned 57.7 per cent of UK quoted company equity by value, one of the highest shares among major advanced economies. EDF Energy, owned by the French state, operates all UK nuclear power stations. Non-UK firms dominate offshore wind. The authors sum up thus: “Reindustrialisation cannot succeed while strategic decisions remain in foreign boardrooms optimising returns for overseas shareholders.”

The country cannot rely on foreign inflows, or on the EU, to help us to rebuild industry. We have to do it ourselves.

To do this, the authors promote a socialist understanding of the importance of the nation. National sovereignty is popular sovereignty expressed at the level of the nation. “Britain can be transformed based on popular and national sovereignty.”

They sum up eloquently: “Ultimately, Britain is only its workers and its natural resources. When combined, they create all wealth. To say the nation has no place in the new world order, is to say workers do not have a place. British workers built the first trade unions, created the first Industrial Revolution, and their struggles in various forms shaped many of our country’s great arts and institutions.”

The authors seek to rouse the people of Britain to action and responsibility, to have faith in their ability to create a better future. The key to this better future is to reindustrialise Britain.

In sum, this fine book takes us well beyond Labour’s contradictory and limited ambitions for Britain’s future, and sets before us what we should prioritise as a vital task.

Labour Conference 2026 / 28 September 2026 Breaking with neoliberalism must mean a shift in wealth and power 28 September 2026 RICHARD BURGON MP looks at the change the Labour government must now deliver under a new leadership

TUC Congress 2026 / 14 September 2026 Energy crisis is accelerating the European Union’s decline 14 September 2026 The TUC fell for the illusion of a ‘Social Europe’ in 1988 and backed single-market membership. DOUG NICHOLLS argues that dramatic changes in the EU prove the need for an independent economic policy

TUC Congress 2026 / 10 September 2026 A strategy for producing wealth must focus on reindustrialising Britain 10 September 2026 DOUG NICHOLLS welcomes a turning point at this year’s Congress, where many motions call for a co-ordinated plan to revive British industry, a perspective outlined in his new book

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