Burnham Launches New British Industrial Revolution, Factories Asked to Restart Once Electricity Becomes Affordable
Prime Minister promises Britain will manufacture the technologies of tomorrow just as soon as someone finds an affordable way to switch the machinery on
LONDON — Prime Minister Andy Burnham has announced plans to revive British industry, setting the nation the modest goal of reversing several decades of deindustrialisation while keeping energy prices high enough to make boiling a kettle feel like a discretionary capital investment.
The backdrop is grim. The Telegraph's account of the Labour conference describes a Nissan plant running at half capacity, a nationalised steelworks bleeding cash, and three silent factories at the Saltend chemicals park in Hull. Westminster looked at all this and declared an industrial renaissance.
Britain is back. It simply needs factories, cheap power, skilled workers, investment, planning permission and, if the current plan holds, several Chinese companies willing to build the renaissance on our behalf.
New British Industrial Revolution
- Britain plans to revive manufacturing by first making electricity so expensive that factories qualify as luxury properties.
- Andy Burnham wants another Industrial Revolution, apparently unaware the first one required industries.
- Government industrial policy increasingly resembles planting a garden while taxing sunlight.
- British manufacturers are told to compete with China, America and Europe while paying energy bills that appear to have been calculated by Sotheby's.
- Manufacturing is only about 8.3% of UK economic output, so Labour has picked the part of the economy that disappeared to lead the revival.
Burnham's Industrial Revolution: Britain Invents Britain Again
The government is promising what Chancellor John Healey calls a "new age of industrialisation", a phrase designed to make you picture glowing furnaces and trains full of exports, not a Treasury official opening a spreadsheet and muttering that one cell really shouldn't be red.
The plan involves more support for strategic industries, a "buy British" procurement drive and investment in technology. Burnham argues that Britain launched the first Industrial Revolution from the Midlands and the North, so why shouldn't it lead the next one? By that reasoning Greece should dominate philosophy, Italy should own every road, and Mongolia should unveil an aggressive expansion strategy involving horses.
The snag is that manufacturing now makes up only about 8.3% of British economic output, while services account for roughly 81%, according to the Office for National Statistics. Manufacturing's share of jobs has fallen from around 30% in the 1970s to 7.8%. Labour has therefore chosen to lead the recovery with the one sector Britain spent fifty years shrinking. This is technically possible. So is bringing back the woolly mammoth, provided somebody finds a sufficiently committed mammoth.
UK Industrial Electricity Prices: Britain's Boutique Champagne Model
Rebuilding manufacturing has an embarrassingly mechanical difficulty. Factories use energy, and plenty of it. Britain's energy policy treats electricity less like an industrial input and more like a limited-edition Champagne sold exclusively at Harrods.
The International Energy Agency figures cited by the Telegraph put UK wholesale electricity nearly 200% above US prices, 45% above Japan and 41% above France over the past year. Make UK calculates that industrial electricity here costs roughly four times the American price. Sir Jim Ratcliffe has reportedly said his gas bills run about twelve times US levels. Nissan's Alan Johnson told MPs that Sunderland pays more for electricity than any other Nissan plant in the world.
That gives British manufacturing a distinctive business model. China makes the product, America invents it, Germany engineers it, and Britain receives the bill. Economists call this comparative disadvantage, a term I have just redefined as the principle whereby every other country looks at Britain and feels better about itself.
Burnham has promised energy costs in line with the rest of Europe "within ten years", which in British infrastructure terms is practically a flash sale.
Nissan Sunderland at Half Capacity: Net Zero Manufacturing, Finally
Sunderland is reportedly running at around half capacity, and economic planners have spotted an opportunity. If factories save money by not making things, British industry could go carbon neutral simply by stopping.
A spokesman from the Department of Industrial Optimism could then tour an empty shop floor, beaming at the emissions figures. They would be superb. No smoke, no output, no exports, no arguments. Net Zero manufacturing, in the most literal sense available.
Buy British Procurement: Government Shops at the Business It Made Expensive
Burnham also wants public procurement to favour British suppliers. This is politically attractive and, in genuinely strategic industries, economically defensible. The comedy is in the sequencing.
The government raises manufacturers' costs, adds employment obligations, maintains an expensive planning system and keeps energy dear. It then discovers that domestic suppliers can't compete and rides in with taxpayers' money to buy their expensive products. This is roughly like pushing a man into a swimming pool and demanding applause for selling him a lifejacket.
The Burnham Doctrine, as best I can reconstruct it: take £10 from British industry, return £7 as an industrial support programme, hire six civil servants to administer the £7, and announce £7 of economic growth.
Harold Wilson's White Heat vs Burnham's Lukewarm Radiator
Labour's conference included warm tributes to Harold Wilson, whose 1963 Scarborough speech promised a Britain forged in the "white heat" of technological revolution. His governments went on to back giant state-brokered combinations such as British Leyland, GEC and International Computers Ltd. All three eventually vanished or were broken up for parts, which for British Leyland was arguably the more dignified outcome than the Allegro.
Six decades later the white heat has been replaced by an induction hob that works between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m., if the grid is in the mood.
The political temptation is unchanged: officials selecting the industries of the future. It has always been popular because selecting the industries of the past requires almost no expertise. The difficulty is spotting the future before everybody else does. According to the Institute for Retrospective Economic Brilliance, Whitehall correctly predicts about 97% of major technological developments shortly after reading about them in the Financial Times.
British Steel Losses: £700,000 a Day and Counting
The Telegraph reports that the nationalised British Steel is losing close to £700,000 a day, and the government has committed £2.5 billion to propping up the sector.
At £700,000 a day, British Steel is producing something with astonishing efficiency. Unfortunately it's losses. If losses were steel, Scunthorpe would be supplying NATO.
There is a serious strategic argument for keeping domestic steel, defence and energy capacity, and a country may reasonably decide that's worth paying for. The trouble starts when "some cost" begins behaving like a teenager with the family credit card. How much should taxpayers spend on strategic production? The government's current answer appears to be "we'll circle back."
Floating Submarine Docks: "Future-Facing" Technology, Allegedly
Labour says it wants "future-facing" technologies. Almost immediately, ministers announced roughly £6 billion for British shipbuilders, including floating submarine docks. Nothing says Silicon Valley like a floating submarine garage.
In California, venture capitalists are arguing about quantum computing. In Britain, a minister is pointing at the sea and saying, "Imagine a dock. But floating." Defence infrastructure matters, but presenting it as proof of a futuristic industrial revolution is like announcing that your grandad's shed has joined the space programme because you've installed Wi-Fi.
Make UK's Shortest Industrial Strategy: Stop Making It Expensive
Make UK welcomed the renewed government attention but warned that manufacturers still face high energy costs, rising employment costs and investment uncertainty. Chief executive Stephen Phipson thereby produced what may be Britain's shortest industrial strategy: before reindustrialising the country, stop making it more expensive to manufacture in it.
Others have floated equally exotic ideas, including cheaper energy, simpler planning, lower construction costs and regulatory stability. These proposals are controversial because none of them requires a 178-page strategy document containing the phrase "stakeholder ecosystem." The British political system distrusts anything that can be explained before lunch.
Chinese Manufacturers in Britain: Changing the Contact Name in Your Phone
China is the largest complication. British manufacturers complain they compete against firms with huge scale, cheaper energy and heavy state support. Britain's answer involves tariffs, subsidies, procurement preferences and inviting Chinese manufacturers to build factories here. The UK is weighing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, while Nissan has signed a non-binding agreement to explore building Chery vehicles at Sunderland.
The industrial strategy therefore becomes: protect British industry from Chinese manufacturers by persuading Chinese manufacturers to become British industry. That isn't economic policy. That's changing the contact name in your phone.
It reads like a dating profile. Seeking: foreign investment. Interests: domestic sovereignty. Dislikes: foreign competition. Relationship status: it's complicated.
Where UK Manufacturing Actually Works: Aerospace, Pharma and South Yorkshire
To be fair, Britain does succeed in places. Aerospace remains strong, pharmaceuticals and life sciences keep real advantages, and South Yorkshire has built advanced manufacturing clusters around Rolls-Royce, Boeing, McLaren and Sheffield's Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre.
Notice the pattern. These things work when government sets good conditions, universities supply the research, private firms invest, skilled workers turn up and politicians resist the urge to assemble the turbine personally. Britain doesn't necessarily need ministers to make things. It needs ministers to make Britain a place where people who know how to make things actually want to.
Make It Profitable to Make Things: The Frightening Conclusion
Burnham's ambition shouldn't be mocked simply because the decline is hard to reverse. A country that can do aerospace, pharmaceuticals, defence engineering, Formula One and financial innovation clearly retains enormous productive strengths.
But Britain can't subsidise its way around every structural weakness. You can't tax competitiveness and then issue competitiveness grants. You can't double the electricity bill and compensate manufacturers with an inspirational conference speech. You can't make construction difficult and then commission a report on why nobody builds anything. And you probably can't launch a Second Industrial Revolution while the first industrialist is still waiting on planning permission to extend his warehouse.
Perhaps the factories will return. Perhaps steel will revive and Sunderland will run flat out again. But if Burnham truly wants Britain making things, he may eventually have to confront the most frightening economic theory ever devised: make it profitable to make things.
A Whitehall committee will be set up immediately to investigate.
10 Humorous Observations on Burnham's Industrial Revolution
- Nissan's Sunderland factory reportedly pays more for electricity than any other Nissan plant worldwide, giving Britain an exciting competitive advantage in invoices.
- Burnham wants the government to "buy British," beginning the ancient tradition of government buying things from businesses that government policy made expensive.
- Harold Wilson promised the "white heat" of technology. Burnham appears to be offering the lukewarm radiator of industrial strategy.
- Britain wants semiconductor factories, battery plants and electric steel furnaces, all industries famous for running without affordable electricity.
- British Steel reportedly loses roughly £700,000 a day, which makes it one of Britain's fastest-growing producers of negative money.
- Labour unions want even more nationalisation, because when your wallet catches fire the traditional response is to buy a petrol station.
- Ministers promise "future-facing technologies" while spending £6 billion on floating submarine docks, so the future apparently involves parking submarines.
- Britain pioneered the Industrial Revolution with coal, steam and entrepreneurship. The sequel will use consultations, procurement rules and a downloadable PDF.
- Manufacturers say they need lower energy, employment and construction costs. Westminster has heroically responded by developing slogans.
- Britain may indeed see another industrial revolution, although at present it consists mainly of industrialists revolving toward the airport.
Satirical Disclaimer
This article is satire. Real statistics, policy proposals and industrial concerns have been used as scaffolding for exaggeration, irony and absurd deduction. No blast furnace was forced to read an industrial strategy during the preparation of this story.
As always, this piece was written entirely as a human collaboration between two sentient beings: the world's oldest tenured professor and a philosophy major turned dairy farmer. Any resemblance between economic policy and a cow wandering repeatedly into the same electric fence is purely educational. https://prat.uk/new-british-industrial-revolution/
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