If AI solved Baumol’s Cost Disease, that would be GOOD

Let us start with some generally accepted facts: So: hope at last? You would think so. And there are two prominent Labour facing think tanks pondering and publishing on this very topic: the IPPR with “Transformed by AI” and Tony Blair Institute’s “Accelerating the Future”. With Labour currently forecast to enjoy a 300 seat majority,

Is “competitiveness” the point – and is it getting worse?

Earlier today I had the privilege of my first in-person appearance before a Select Committee – Business and Trade interviewing me, George Dibb, Geoff Owen and Paul Swinney on Industrial Policy. I inevitably found myself confronting a question I was not prepared for: “has the UK lost its competitive edge?”. Thankfully, George’s tweet broadcasting the

Final thoughts on the £28bn

I promise this is the last of it. If you have the time, listen to Osborne and Balls on their podcast discussing the £28bn U-turn.  I missed it, but Ed Balls apparently said that for U-turns to work, they have to be big and ugly, and that way the voters really notice, and that is

Industrial strategy, its quantity and the Certainty Fixation

As of February 2nd 2024 there is a gigantic and ongoing fuss about the exact status of Labour’s £28bn climate investment promise. It is probably the exact fuss that the dying and likely departing current government wants to see happen, the last Balrog-whip of an attack before they plummet into the abyss.* You can probably

What is your favourite explanation for our fall in growth?

For someone who spends as long as I do noodling over the UK economy, it is flat out embarrassing that I do not have an immediate and confident answer to this question. Here is a reasonable contender for the most important chart of the era. Taken from OBR figures (so easy to do), this shows

Please read Ed Conway’s Material World, it is really good

Here is the question I think you must answer before formulating a strong opinion on technology and growth: what do you think are the real binding constraints that limit our productive future? Are they labour, technology, energy, food, environmental sustainability, a decent level of security or something else? Professor Richard Jones, a polymath able to

The Economist’s assault on the new industrial policy

You don’t have to follow me for long on Twitter to realise I rate the Economist, and also have an interest in industrial strategy, so this week’s special section hammering it is essential reading for me. It is worth summarising and keeping it to hand – because for an industrial strategy to be any good,

A blob-chart way of dissecting Britain’s prosperity failure

It’s been a fairly bad 15 years or so for economic growth, hasn’t it? There are plenty of ways of discussing this – charts of a line rising steadily up to mid 2008, turning sharply down and then never quite getting back on track. I have quite a few in this somewhat downbeat attempt from

The Myth of “No Austerity”

If you attend to enough right-wing commentary on the dismal state of the UK, at some point you will hear or read some version of the following: “But they never even cut public spending! We haven’t been Conservative at all! This is SOCIALISM”. The marvellous Liz Truss event at the Institute for Government provided the

Ted Lasso versus the Triangle of Crapness

About six months ago, we passed the point at which bad news for the economy was good news for Labour.  Thanks to Liz Truss, the Conservatives have lost their reputation for economic competence. High mortgage rates will be associated with this government, come what may. Labour are now around 90% likely to be in power