Earlier this year, three former business secretaries openly despaired over Rishi Sunak’s reluctance to develop a proper industrial strategy for Britain. One of them, Lord Mandelson, recalled that Mr Sunak had once told him “that he did not see it as part of his job to have businesses forming an orderly queue in front of his office asking for handouts”.
For much of Labour’s three terms in office between 1997 and 2010, it appeared to share this kneejerk antipathy towards state intervention in the economy. Post-Thatcher, the free-market dogma that governments should refrain from “picking winners” became a cross-party consensus that did needless damage to the country’s economic fabric.
