Reindustrialisation can give working people their freedom back
Jonathan Reynolds – then business secretary, and who has returned to the role under Andy Burnham – lifts molten metal during a visit to the British Steel site in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, April 2025 (PA Images / Alamy)
5 min read
The defining political question for the next decade is not the size of the state, nor the level of taxation. It is whether Britain can once again become a country where ordinary working people have the freedom to build a good life.
That is why Andy Burnham is right to place reindustrialisation at the heart of his agenda. It is also why I’m part of Labour’s Reindustrialisation Research Group of MPs. Because reindustrialisation is not simply an economic strategy – it is a freedom agenda.
For too long, we have spoken about freedom almost exclusively in negative terms: freedom from regulation, freedom from taxes, freedom from government. Those debates have their place, but they overlook a deeper truth.
Freedom is not simply the absence of restraint. Freedom is the presence of opportunity. It is the freedom to earn a decent wage; to learn a skilled trade; to own a home, raise a family and build a future in the community that shaped you. Above all, it is the freedom to become everything you are capable of becoming.
That freedom has steadily been taken away from too many Red Wall communities. Across the North, the Midlands and Britain’s industrial heartlands, people did not lose ambition. They lost opportunity. They lost industries that had sustained families for generations, and they lost secure, skilled work. And with that went something far more valuable than a payslip: the confidence that if you worked hard, your children would live better lives than you had.
That was never simply an economic loss. It was a loss of freedom. Deindustrialisation did not just close factories – it hollowed out communities, weakened civic institutions and left too many towns dependent upon decisions made hundreds of miles away by people who neither understood their history nor shared their aspirations.
For decades, Britain has attempted to manage that decline. We have redistributed wealth rather than creating it. We have expanded welfare while shrinking productive capacity. We have concentrated investment in already successful places while asking everyone else to be patient. It has not worked.
The answer is not to manage decline more efficiently. It is to reverse it. That is the mission of reindustrialisation. The Reindustrialisation Research Group exists because Britain needs far more than another set of short-term economic interventions. We need a new political economy that makes more things, in more places, with more British workers. One that builds resilience against global shocks, creates good jobs close to where people live and restores agency to communities that have too often felt powerless.
This is not nostalgia but necessity. The world is becoming less globalised and more competitive. Nations are once again thinking seriously about energy security, manufacturing capacity, critical minerals and strategic supply chains. Britain cannot afford to watch from the sidelines while others rebuild their industrial strength, nor can Red Wall communities afford another generation of missed opportunities.
Reindustrialisation means producing more of our own energy, making more of our own steel, building more advanced manufacturing, and investing in defence, nuclear, engineering and new technologies. It means patriotic procurement that backs British workers, affordable energy that allows industry to compete and an active state willing to invest where markets alone will not.
Most importantly, it means spreading that investment fairly across every nation and region of the United Kingdom. Economic growth that benefits only London is not national renewal. It is geographical inequality with a larger GDP. The true measure of success is whether a young person growing up in Hartlepool, Stoke, Wrexham, Grimsby or Bolsover has the same freedom to build a successful life as someone growing up anywhere else in Britain.
That is why education matters. Vocational skills matter. Transport matters. Industrial policy matters. Every apprenticeship, skilled job and factory built expands freedom. Every community connected to opportunity expands freedom.
That is why I joined the Reindustrialisation Research Group. Its mission is not merely to scrutinise policy but to help shape a long-term national strategy capable of transforming Britain’s economy. One that matches the scale of the challenge with the scale of investment required, recognising that Parliament has a responsibility not simply to react to change but to help lead it.
The objective is straightforward: to build an economy that works everywhere, not just somewhere. Working-class communities are not asking for special treatment. They are asking for the chance to contribute again. They do not want dependency. They want dignity. They do not want permanent redistribution. They want productive work. They do not want managed decline. They want national renewal. And they do not simply want freedom from government.
They want the freedom that comes from opportunity: the freedom to work, to earn, to build, to innovate, to stay close to family, to own a home and to believe that hard work will once again be rewarded. That is the promise of reindustrialisation. Not simply stronger economic statistics, but stronger communities. Not simply higher growth, but wider opportunity. Not simply a wealthier Britain, but a freer one.
If we are serious about taking back our freedom, then we must once again become a nation that makes things, builds things and believes in the people who have always been at the heart of Britain’s success. For Red Wall Britain, freedom will not be won through slogans. It will be won through opportunity. And opportunity begins with reindustrialisation.
Jonathan Brash is Labour MP for Hartlepool and a founding member of the Reindustrialisation Research Group
