How We Build Britain

Three crises in six years. A pandemic. A war. A strait most of us could not have placed on a map two months ago. Each has shown us, in turn, the scale of the UK’s dependency on foreign supply chains. And the cost of an economic orthodoxy that treats market intervention in the national interest as the last possible resort.In this closing episode of the opening trilogy of How We Build Britain, I draw on thirteen years of work on supply chain interventions and investments to ask why we have not learned, why we are repeating the mistake in the energy transition, and what it would take to spend the money we are already spending as builders, not just as buyers.

How has Denmark prospered from one big industrial bet? How did South Korea build an industrial economy that excels in everything from shipbuilding to cutting-edge batteries? Why did Japan keep its heavy industries when everyone else let theirs go?Each made deliberate choices. Each sustained them across decades and changes of government. Each underpinned them with competitive energy. And each now has options that countries without industrial depth simply do not have.Britain has done the opposite. Four industrial strategies launched and abandoned since the early 2000s. The highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world. A manufacturing share of GDP that has halved in a generation.In this episode, I look at what the countries that built lasting industrial strength actually did, what happened when the United States tried to do it at speed and then reversed course, and what Britain can learn whilst it has the chance.

Britain has deindustrialised more than any other developed nation. The energy transition, the largest industrial demand signal this country will generate for decades, offers a chance to reverse that trend. The question is whether we take it.In this first episode, I explore why Britain has become world-class at deploying energy infrastructure but consistently fails to capture the industrial value that comes with it. From the offshore wind content gap to the stop-start history of British industrial strategy, I make the case that energy is not just a climate or technology story. It is the cause and the cure for Britain’s deindustrialisation.This is the first in a three-part series on the energy transition, from a broader podcast that will focus on energy, infrastructure, and industry.