Tag: Peter Mandelson

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March 6, 2009 – first “Low Carbon Industrial Strategy” announced

Sixteen years ago, on this day, March 6th, 2009, Peter Mandelson launching low carbon industrial strategy says 400,000 jobs in the next decade..

. https://www.letsrecycle.com/news/mandelson-launches-low-carbon-strategy/

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 387ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that with the Global Financial Crisis in full swing, Peter Mandelson recently returned from time as a European Commissioner and bringing back a new-found love of industrial policy launched the first “low carbon industrial strategy with the all singing, all dancing Copenhagen climate conference coming up in 10 months. And of course, the Climate Change Act passed into law only two months previously. So this needs to be seen in the context of UK/EU/global efforts. 

What I think we can learn from this is that “industrial policy” as an okay thing goes back further than we thought – I mean, it was a standard Keynesian tool. However, after the post-stagflation triumph of the monetarists/neoliberals, it was career suicide in the 80s and 90s and first half of the noughties to say it, because you would be met with “beer and sandwiches at number 10” as an insult and apparently argument-winningpoint.

What happened next

Well, Gordon Brown’s premiership was at this point, already clearly a dead duck. There was an election in 2010 and to the shame of the Liberal Democrats, hungry for limousines and red boxes, they enabled the Tories (but then Nick Clegg is a Tory on everything except Europe). And although portions of the green rhetoric were kept, it was adios to industrial policy in any meaningful sense.

The low carbon industrial policy went south, but then came back and back and back again, and a new one is going to be launched in June (already pushed back from March). 

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

March 6, 1992 – #survival emissions versus outright denial 

March 6, 2002 – ABARE cheerleads Bush. Blecch.

March 6, 2009 – the UK gets its first “low carbon industrial strategy”

Categories
United Kingdom

March 6, 2009 – the UK gets its first “low carbon industrial strategy”

On this day in 2009. Peter Mandelson, then Secretary of State for business, launched the very brief, glossy, “low carbon industrial strategy” of the United Kingdom. 

First though, he had to clean up after having a cup of green custard poured over him by an anti-airport expansion activist.

The context is the global financial crisis had made it possible to talk about industrial strategy again. For the previous 20 plus years, to do so, in the UK, was to put a target on your back and to write a career suicide note, because you were clearly an interventionist communist “beer sandwiches at number 10” kind of person.

Why this matters. 

We need to remember that what is “possible” (even just to talk about) is most often shaped by events that have nothing to do, in particular, with the issue at hand. So, the GFC opened up a discursive space, which has kinda-sorta been occupied and maintained – whether that discursive space has made policy implementation as opposed to announcements is a question for another day or for a research fellowship. 

What happened next?

The industrial strategy went nowhere, because everyone knew the Brown Government was toast. The Coalition Government that replaced it came up with “The Carbon Plan”, then another one, then another one. And here we are.