How Andy Burnham can deliver True Labour reindustrialisation

On the steps of Downing Street yesterday, we heard a clear call to turn the page on forty years of economic mismanagement. Our country’s reckless experiment in extreme deindustrialisation is at the heart of this broken paradigm. As the prime minister put it, “large parts of the country de-industrialised, and they still haven’t recovered.”

That is why we are proud to serve as officers to the newly formed Reindustrialisation Research Group. Our ambition is bold but simple: create one million jobs in production over the next decade and ensure that every part of Britain has a stake in making things again.

While it’s important to measure economic success through national GDP, let’s also not overlook where that growth happens, who benefits from it, and whether it creates the kind of lives people actually want. We need to ensure that jobs are secure, not concentrated in a handful of places or industries, or disconnected from the communities that need them most.

That’s why production is an inherently Labour project. It’s about ensuring that the entire country can play a part in our national story – not just a sliver of places. As the prime minister has said, it has to reach every postcode, not just our biggest cities. Expanding production means good jobs: skilled jobs, well-paid jobs, secure jobs and, where workers choose, unionised jobs. It means apprenticeships, career progression and dignity at work. This is True Labour.

Reindustrialisation is also critical for political reasons. Labour needs a second term – previous transformative governments have almost always depended on them to deliver real change. It will certainly be essential to deliver the prime minister’s new ten-year plan for Britain – which we expect reindustrialisation to be at the heart of. Many of the constituencies that will determine whether Labour governs after the next election are the very places that once made Britain’s steel, chemicals, buses, machinery and advanced components.

They are coastal towns, former industrial communities and manufacturing centres where people are less interested in abstract economic statistics than in whether their children can find a skilled, well-paid job without moving away. The phrase “red wall” isn’t always useful as the areas the phrase was used to describe are far from uniform, and it also excludes parts of the United Kingdom that share its industrial past, but there is nevertheless a clear overlap between many of Labour’s key electoral battlegrounds and the areas shaped by Britain’s industrial past.

That means reindustrialisation is an electoral strategy just as much as it is an economic one. If people can see new factories opening, apprenticeships expanding, colleges teaching the skills employers actually need, and secure, unionised jobs returning to their communities, then they will have tangible evidence that government is making a difference. If growth remains something that happens somewhere else, measured in spreadsheets rather than pay packets, we should not be surprised if voters conclude that nothing has really changed and they roll the dice again on a different type of government.

This is why an ambition to create one million new jobs in production matters so much. It speaks directly to the question many voters are asking: not “Is UK plc growing?” but “Is my town benefiting?” and “Will my family be better off?” This sort of framing is a far more powerful political test than GDP alone, and one that any successful Labour government must be prepared to meet.

The lesson from Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act is instructive. The IRA succeeded in attracting enormous private investment into new industries. Successful economies, though, need more than just investment in the abstract. If people don’t see better jobs in their own towns, if wages don’t rise, if supply chains remain overseas, and if local people aren’t equipped with the skills to fill those new roles, then political goodwill quickly evaporates. The Democrats, as we know, failed to win the presidency in 2024. Britain has the chance to learn from that experience.

Alongside a long-term vision, there are practical steps the new government could take. First, introduce targeted fuel duty support for the minerals sector, recognising the combined impact of the removal of the red diesel rebate in 2022 and recent global instability of fuel costs. Red diesel fuel duty reductions were welcome for the agricultural sector, but we must support the sectors driving our housebuilding agenda.

Second, make greater use of national security designations where strategically important industries are being undercut by unfair international competition. Bus manufacturing is one obvious example where new registration electric buses are now majority foreign-built.  If we want resilient domestic supply chains, government should be prepared to defend them.

Third, accelerate the introduction of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism for the refining sector. British industry should never be penalised simply for producing to higher environmental standards than its overseas competitors. The Tories’ inaction on this lost us Grangemouth and had been a barrier to investment in biorefining. We can and must expedite this.

Reindustrialisation is about so much more than mere sepia-tinged nostalgia. It’s about facing up to the challenges of the future. It’s about making sure that when Britain grows again, working people grow with it. That is the kind of economic mission the country has been waiting for. We look forward to supporting the prime minister to deliver it.

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