A bit more on George Osborne's speech which Jeegar has talked about below.
In what Stephanie Flanders has described as 'surprising' remarks, he praised left-leaning economist, Will Hutton, talked of the need for the UK to take a more strategic approach to economic policy and had a bit of a pop at the financial services for its short-termist approach to investment.
Will Hutton, it should be remembered, wrote a best-selling book (The State we're in), which was required reading for the New Labour classes in the mid-1990s and criticised the UK's economic system (under the previous government) for encouraging short term rent-seeking, ahead of long-term investment. In today's speech Mr Osborne has appeared to agree and said that a Conservative government would take a longer and more strategic approach to investment in infrastructure, skills and investment.
In particular he talked about their plans to support investment in high-speed rail, a 'smart' electricity grid and carbon capture and storage. Here he claimed that the role of government would vary according to the nature of invesments. In some cases, such as nuclear, he sees its role as sending price signals that encourage investment, in others cases HMG might use regualtory incentives or direct investment through a revised PFI model.
He also talked about the need to get the banks to improve the supply of long-term credit to industry and said that his Party is looking at the viability of creating government institutions - such as an industrial bank - to do so. Nonetheless whatever the intervention, it is clear that this is a very different approach to recent policy, which has tended to focus on using government policy to simply address market failures.
Of course, whether this approach will be welcomed by the more free-market elements of the Conservative Party is another matter. But this speech, and the current government's recent talk about 'industrial activism', seem to suggest the emergence of a new consensus amongst policy-makers on the need for government to take a more active role in supporting key sectors where the UK could have future strength.
EEF will be saying more about this issue in the next few weeks, but as the UK heads to a general election the most important thing will be to hear how the political parties actually plan to do this in practice...