There’s work to do when we get back from summer break
Date published:
The Chamber’s latest column for The Journal by Rachel Anderson, assistant director of policy.
The sun is out, the Olympics are on, there’s no Sunday night school uniform wash… the summer holidays are either here or moving into view (well maybe not if you are in the Dover ferry queue, but you take the point) and no one has asked you to pre-order your Christmas party main course quite yet.
We are in that glorious period of summer where we often have the space to take stock of the year so far and do some planning ahead – after an ice-cream, of course.
During the General Election each side tried to convince us, not altogether successfully, that the other didn’t have a plan. It turns out they did and on growth and the economy, the plan is… to make another plan, or rather, a strategy, a big industrial strategy.
Now we’ve had these before, some of you may even have contributed before they got put on a shelf somewhere. They usually point out that industrially successful nations plan ahead and have a ready supply of, and control over, key commodities such as steel or microchips to feed into a manufacturing sector which has the skills and knowledge it needs, and transport to move the stuff they eventually make.
Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Except if it were so simple, we’d have done it 30 years ago and would be merely making the odd tweak here and there.
This time might be different though because things are changing. The first change is, of course, sustainability and net zero. Yes, it is probably something else we should have done 30 years ago, but the urgency is driving new thinking on what the future may look like rather than past successes.
Secondly, there is the galloping prevalence of AI and what its implications are for our economy, this is something we couldn’t have dealt with 30 months ago, never mind 30 years.
The third is local decision making and the idea that each region will produce its own mini strategy which will all come together beautifully to form one like the giant torch at the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony. The onus will be on us to produce our North East and Tees Valley strategies, looking at how we’re going to play to our considerable strengths to drive growth.
So, while you are eating your summer ice creams or when you can’t tear yourself away from Costa Rica v Laos in Olympic water polo; have the back of your mind working on our local strategy. Because when we all get back, we’ve got work to do.