UK Manufacturing - the road to return?
Last month’s Civitas report on reviving manufacturing after the COVID 19 argues some interesting perspectives on ailments of the UK economy and the possible solutions ahead.
The Road To Recovery is authored by John Mills - Chairman of Consumer Goods company John Mills Limited - and also lifelong Labour Party activist and Chair of Labour Leave, which because independent of Vote Leave two months before the UK/EU referendum.
Part of Mills’s thesis is that the UK economy has been unbalanced for several decades - favouring services over manufacturing. ‘Deindustrialisation has left us with too little to sell to the rest of the world…Too strong a pound…is lethal for siting new manufacturing facilities in the UK. It has made it impossible to invest in the mechanisation, technology and power which are the keys to the successful restricting and expansion of our economy.’
Mills proposes a new approach to manufacturing investment together with a lower sterling exchange rate in order to raise UK growth prospects. He also argues for a rebalancing of prosperity, re-industrialisation and autonomy throughout the UK’s regions in order to ease London-centric bias; a proposal that may chime with post-Covid 19 society.
The full report is available here.
