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.