Kwasi Kwarteng was Conservative Candidate for Brent East at the General
Election of 2005, Chairman of the Bow Group in 2006 and a candidate for the London Assembly in 2008. He holds a
doctorate in Economic History from Cambridge University, has worked as
an investment analyst, and is currently writing Ghosts of Empire, a book about the international legacy of the British Empire.
It’s not often I find myself agreeing with Lord Mandelson, but during his interview on the Today programme yesterday morning he did say something with which many Conservatives would agree: Mandelson said that he thought we should, as a nation, have a manufacturing base, as well as a financial one.
This is common sense. We tell people in tough times to learn new skills. We tell communities to diversify their sources of income. This also applies to countries. Sovereign nations like Kenya are constantly being told by the IMF not to rely on coffee or a few basic commodities, but to develop other industries and revenue streams.
What is the situation, however, of our own country, UK plc? We were the manufacturing nation of the world in the nineteenth century, but towards the end of the twentieth century we became reliant, to a very considerable degree, on financial services. Where did that lead us?
I believe the City of London to be one of the greatest achievements in the history of capitalism. We should all be proud of our traditions of finance. Yet saying this does not mean we should neglect manufacturing.
For too long, a crude free market ideology has prevailed in which badly run companies like British Leyland were allowed to disappear. Tory figures like Lord Heseltine, who famously boasted about intervening “before breakfast, at lunchtime, in the evening”, were lampooned by the high priests of free trade.
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