I found the Foundations piece to be both illuminating and encouraging. But only to the extent the government of the day finds it similarly so. Can you please share what has become of it since, in terms of your interactions with ministers/the civil service? Have you achieved any traction?
I haven't read your Foundations essay but I have read Ed West's post about it and have to say that this displayed a poor understanding of Britain’s economic history. Its decline as an economic behemoth did not – as the post contended – start after WW2 (although it did accelerate then). It started way back in the late 19th c. – as soon in fact as better adapted nations (particularly USA, Germany and Japan) started to compete with it. The reasons are complex but none of the principal ones were flagged in that post. Principal reasons included: 1) the peculiar resilience of the British class system meant that manufacturing enterprise (‘trade’) was always looked down on and the 2nd generation of its great manufacturing dynasties got out of it as soon as possible. Hence Britain became a place brimful of lawyers and ‘what we would now call ‘creative & media people’ but woefully lacking in technologists and nuts and bolts engineers. 2) The Empire masked (and partly caused) Britain’s uncompetitiveness for many decades because it had a captive market for its lack-lustre products. https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/thinkpieces/the-consequences-of-economic-ignorance
"this displayed a poor understanding of Britain’s economic history." Graham, that's overstated. Agreed that many factors played a role in economic performance, but (a) even in 20th century the UK had periods of success and productivity performance better than peers - the 1930s during the era of "cheap money" for example. (b) lack of investment, public and private , is a persuasive explanation of why our particularly poor performance in the past thirty years (alongside weakness in engineering, but surely linked) (c) best to focus on factors that we can change - fixing our class system is going to be pretty difficult, making it easier to build things is maybe achievable.
Also crude economic comparisons between nations can be hugely misleading. For instance:
* Norway is a huge landmass with a low density population….easy to build infrastructure there. The Lower Thames Crossing on the other hand is in one of the most densely populated (and politically quarrelsome places on earth. Chalk and cheese.
* France is a big (and mostly low density) landmass and is administed by a powerful centalised elite civil service with the power, when it chooses, to override local opposition. Britain's administative culture is the opposite of this. Again chalk and cheese.
I found the Foundations piece to be both illuminating and encouraging. But only to the extent the government of the day finds it similarly so. Can you please share what has become of it since, in terms of your interactions with ministers/the civil service? Have you achieved any traction?
I haven't read your Foundations essay but I have read Ed West's post about it and have to say that this displayed a poor understanding of Britain’s economic history. Its decline as an economic behemoth did not – as the post contended – start after WW2 (although it did accelerate then). It started way back in the late 19th c. – as soon in fact as better adapted nations (particularly USA, Germany and Japan) started to compete with it. The reasons are complex but none of the principal ones were flagged in that post. Principal reasons included: 1) the peculiar resilience of the British class system meant that manufacturing enterprise (‘trade’) was always looked down on and the 2nd generation of its great manufacturing dynasties got out of it as soon as possible. Hence Britain became a place brimful of lawyers and ‘what we would now call ‘creative & media people’ but woefully lacking in technologists and nuts and bolts engineers. 2) The Empire masked (and partly caused) Britain’s uncompetitiveness for many decades because it had a captive market for its lack-lustre products. https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/thinkpieces/the-consequences-of-economic-ignorance
"this displayed a poor understanding of Britain’s economic history." Graham, that's overstated. Agreed that many factors played a role in economic performance, but (a) even in 20th century the UK had periods of success and productivity performance better than peers - the 1930s during the era of "cheap money" for example. (b) lack of investment, public and private , is a persuasive explanation of why our particularly poor performance in the past thirty years (alongside weakness in engineering, but surely linked) (c) best to focus on factors that we can change - fixing our class system is going to be pretty difficult, making it easier to build things is maybe achievable.
Also crude economic comparisons between nations can be hugely misleading. For instance:
* Norway is a huge landmass with a low density population….easy to build infrastructure there. The Lower Thames Crossing on the other hand is in one of the most densely populated (and politically quarrelsome places on earth. Chalk and cheese.
* France is a big (and mostly low density) landmass and is administed by a powerful centalised elite civil service with the power, when it chooses, to override local opposition. Britain's administative culture is the opposite of this. Again chalk and cheese.
Probably you should read the essay, Graham.
Thanks for writing this.