While I welcome most of the proposals outlined today by John Redwood, I have to say that I am a bit sceptical on some points. The painted picture of weak and a crumbling infrastructure is undoubtedly the right one as, are the failures of Labour policies in that respect. Yet I think that simply just simply relying on some ‘competition’ to solve these problems is, very immature.

It is perfectly fair to say that red tape needs to be eliminated concerning businesses and, that the taxes affecting businesses should be reduced if possible, without further complicating the existing tax system. Concerning railways, I have said numerous times that excessive control from the government is preventing healthy growth and creates waste in the process. But the truth is that, while massive investments are needed if we want to have a world class system. Some of the investment WILL have to come from the Treasury, this is particularly true if large scale modernisation projects are attempted. Since returns on such investments are only apparent after up to twenty years, private investment will always be limited in scope and it is very foolish to assume the contrary. On the others points highlighted by John Redwood, like the lack of technical innovation, vertically integrated railways are the solution, however ones has to acknowledge that this means regional monopolies, free of governmental influence (like during pre-BR times) and not competition.

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The changes in the United Kingdom economic structure, from a manufacturing based economy to a service based economy are often the subject of debates and are most often considered as positive. However, before making any conclusion on this, it is very important to have an historical look at what happened, far away from sentences like ‘the Tories sold off our industries’.

Britain created most of its current wealth thanks to manufacturing and, as most people know, the Industrial Revolution started here. The relative decline of manufacturing started much earlier than what is commonly thought. Indeed by the time of the First World War, Britain was outmatched by both Germany and the United States. The reasons for this decline are numerous, but the lack of technological investment was a major factor at the time. Real decline in the sense commonly understood, only started for good after the Second World War and accelerated once the seventies were reached.

Beyond statements like ‘Maggie destroyed our pits and our factories’, the truth is clearly not at the advantage of the ‘defenders of British industries’ namely, the Labour Party. One of the reasons of the decline, was the lack of properly trained workers. Indeed manufacturing requires skills which are very different from the ones required for white collar jobs, one of the aspects of the Tripartite system were Technical Secondary Schools. These schools very similar to the ones existing in Germany and to the French Lycées Techniques, had a very clear role, providing the engineers, scientists, machinists and technicians of tomorrow. They were nevertheless starved of cash by the Labour Party and its trade unionists cronies. Now let’s talk a bit about, the crazy mergers and then nationalisations made by Harold Wilson. Labour involvement in the motor industry had only one result, the creation of an unmanageable juggernaut, offering similar yet competing products whose dire fate was already sealed in the seventies, the same can be said for the steel making and the shipbuilding industry. Excessive taxation of profits and the free hand given to the trade unions, also did a very good job in wrecking what was working, in the few industries still in private hands.

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