📢After a brief hiatus the UK appears to have an industrial strategy again! This is very welcome news!

🇬🇧The publication of the Green Paper is an important first step to securing long-term green growth for the UK:

👇A few thoughts on its content below gov.uk/government/con… 1⃣The green paper is very clear about what its *not* which is important

Industrial strategy is *not* the entirety of a growth strategy, if you want something to solve every problem in the economy you're in the wrong place. This is one intervention among many needed for growth

📉NEW @IPPR report out today by me and @carsjung on the dire state of investment in the UK economy - across many measures the UK is rock bottom among G7 economies

A 🧵 of depressing graphs follows..... On total investment (public + private + households) the UK is *by far* the lowest investor in the G7

In the past 30 years, the UK has been bottom of the ranking for 24 of them

We're far behind the USA, our nearest competitor, by 3% of GDP

To try and finally put an end to the question 'just how many plans for growth have this government had?' I am pleased to announce....

📢🏭THE DEFINITIVE LIST OF UK INDUSTRIAL STRATEGIES (POST-2010)🧑‍🏭📢

(I'll expand this thread as and when we get new ones) Number 1⃣ George Osbourne's 'Plan for Growth' (March 2011)
Announced alongside the 2011 budget this focused on lowering corp taxes and global competitiveness https://t.co/GzNVZkLh0Xgov.uk/government/pub…

Thames Water are on the verge of being taken back into public ownership because of their £14bn "unsustainable" debt - but where did it come from?

I looked at the last 20yrs of accounts and their long-term debt tracks their dividend and net interest payments over the period https://t.co/FPnXxogAHa

https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1674062000735887360

Since 2002 Thames Water have paid:
💰£3.2 billion in dividends
💸£8.8 billion in net interest payments

📢NEW @IPPR BLOG w @LukeSMurphy 📢

🇬🇧 If the economy is the UK's engine, investment is its fuel. But the UK’s tank is running on empty and it’s harming economic growth, driving inequality, and slowing progress towards net zero and energy security.

ippr.org/blog/now-is-th… 💰 Investment drives economic growth, job creation, & innovation

Sadly, the UK consistently ranks low in investment compared to other countries, lagging behind G7 & OECD peers

👎The last time the UK was above the G7 median level of investment as a proportion of GDP was in 1990

There are lots of interesting points and good policies in this speech, but its really notable how Starmer and Reeves are leaning into the "new Washington consensus" being set by the Biden administration 🏭🇺🇸 This is solid on the economics and smart on the politics...

https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1670718210021416960

🇺🇸🇬🇧On the policy, Labour is leaning into the space carved out by likes of @MazzucatoM & @rodrikdani & thinktanks on both sides of the Atlantic

Starmer was clear that leaving your economic strategy to the market doesnt work and a Lab gov would be active, smart & strategic💪

This is nonsense

The OECD tax agreement doesn't take sovereignty *away* from the UK, it returns sovereignty over tax affairs *to* the UK

As long as we have an intl race to the bottom on Corp Tax we have no sovereignty to set rates here for large firms

telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/… Most of the MPs signing up to this have long opposed the global agreement because of a dream of the UK as a low tax haven, but they just don't understand how the agreement works!

If UK were to cut taxes below the min, large firms based here wouldn't pay any less tax....

Absolutely incredible defence of 'Treasury orthodoxy' in the FT

Let's not forget why the UK is facing higher inflation than other countries: an orthodoxy that said it was totally fine to privatise, and then close, our national gas storage facilities

on.ft.com/3tloszR This is the same Treasury orthodoxy that crushed the Industrial Strategy, the last serious attempt to invest in productivity and productive capacity in the economy, disbanding an entire BEIS directorate and replacing it with no new staff at HMT

ippr.org/blog/failing-t…

This is 15-year old Audrey Mossom from Lytham St Annes who won the 'Railway Queen' beauty pageant in 1935
That year she had the honour of turning on the Blackpool illuminations and was then... [checks notes]... sent on a special train to the USSR to meet Joseph Stalin Lots of industries in the 20th century used to have these contest, Railway Queen, Coal Queen, etc.
For some reason someone thought it would be a good idea to send a 15-year old on a peace-keeping mission to Moscow

📈Why having a proper 'Plan for Growth' is the route out of the cost-of-living crisis and our best way of avoiding a macro-economic "doom loop"

A 🧵....

https://twitter.com/GeorgeDibb/status/1590964411988058113

For all its (catastrophic) failures, Truss-economics got one thing right...the past 12yrs of Conservative governments have overseen economic stagnation and we need to get serious about the UK's weak growth since the financial crisis

https://twitter.com/TorstenBell/status/1566479748284432386?s=20&t=hvM8a_k4CxXHp3e_9i7AEA

1/ Today @IPPR publishes a briefing paper on why the UK should get behind the Biden plans for a global minimum corporation tax

At the G7 this month the UK should be leading from the front for a new global consensus on taxation 🌎💸🏦 2/ We argue that first and foremost this would be fair⚖️

The race to the bottom on tax hasn't delivered and has meant that small firms and high-street shops suffer as multi-national firms pay low (to no) tax by shifting profits offshore. The Biden plan would put a stop to this.