The UK, once the workshop of the world, has promoted itself over recent years as leading the way in the post-industrial age. The shift away from productive activity led the Economist to note recently that many of the brightest recent graduates ended up in Canary Wharf, where ‘they looked down on the remains of what was once the world’s busiest port and on a past that Britain seemed to have left far behind’. Now that financial and business services, property and retail are in a parlous state, where might we find a new engine of growth for the UK?

There is no shortage of sectors to invest in: we could invest in GM technology or nuclear energy, yet remain hesitant and ambiguous. Environmental services, green technologies, nanotechnology, bioscience and the creative industries have each shown promise, but we are still not investing heavily in them. Neither is there a shortage of cash: the UK’s substantial stimulus package could have been used on new areas of innovation or industry, rather than on programmes already in existence, or propping up out-of-date industries.

Are we culturally disinclined to embrace productive economic activity? For too long we have parroted the mantras of the Knowledge Economy; maybe we took policy-pundit Charlie Leadbeater’s script, Living on Thin Air, too literally. The dynamism, social aspiration, educational excellence and visionary infrastructural projects on show in China and India might remind us why productivity matters. While we talk up innovation in the UK, in practice we seem wary of experimentation, risk-taking, competition and ambition. Is the Western acceptance of the need to limit growth, whether for fear of environmental Armageddon or becaue excess wealth leads to greed and ‘unhappiness’, at odds with aspirations for future development? What should progressives aspire to when investing in the future?

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