Having just seen the BBC’s intriguing and somewhat informative documentary, entitled “Made in Britain”, which discussed the various staples of Britain’s economic diet, there are a couple of points to pick up on. Evan Davis seems to be fairly switched on as far as journalists go, but it’s a shame that (again) the job of purveying important information to the public has been left to somebody with such ‘red’ tinted lenses.
The BBC is supposed to be an “apolitical” organisation, but a fair slice of the programme was devoted to slating the financial industry, whilst extolling the virtues of growing our manufacturing sector again. That said however, Davis’ narrative on how Britain transformed itself from a manufacturing economy to a service-based one was very accomplished.
It was strange, though, that he laid bare the main reasons for the decline in heavy industry (i.e. other countries closing the knowledge gap and offering cheaper labour), only to then argue that we need to take a step back towards our industrial past if we’re to drag ourselves out of recession. The problem here is that he ignores the main reason manufacturing has died so resoundingly over here… and I doubt there will be a reversal in our labour laws any time soon to remove this stumbling block.
It was also disappointing to hear the BBC perpetuating populist narrative about finance causing more problems than it solves. Again, this was an odd tack for a documentary about the prevalence of service industries in our country to take. Having argued that Britain has reinvented itself as a service economy out of necessity, Davis capped off his criticism by presenting the lower rates banks have enjoyed in the Money Markets, due to the backing of taxpayers, as a form of daylight robbery.
This is a slightly disingenuous viewpoint, as the fact is that the UK Government wouldn’t let a major bank fail under any circumstances anyway; the fallout would be catastrophic. This position will have been strengthened by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and seeing the economic carnage that its failure caused. Lower overnight borrowing is essentially a side effect of the importance of banking to our social fabric (thus the inability to let it fail); it would be poor business not to take advantage of the cold reality at play here. In fact if you follow Davis’ argument to its logical conclusion, Britain has remained economically competitive precisely because our service institutions, financial or otherwise, can capitalise on international brand recognition and trust.
The bottom line is that Britain needs to be able to attract investment by way of offering services to other economies and individuals; that much is in fact tacitly admitted by Evan Davis. I would recommend watching his commentary on what is a currently a hot topic (at least it should be); just be aware that there are certainly no feasible solutions on offer, and that some of the debate isn’t quite as cogent as you may wish to see from an apolitical media organisation.
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