Having an industrial plan depends on what you mean by an industrial plan

A suggestion in The Times that Britain really should have an industrial plan. Part of which we actually agree with:

And the default option of doing nothing does not mean staying true to some kind of untainted free market codex. It just means allowing all our mistakes — chaotic energy policy, underinvestment, insufficient workforce training and an ill-planned net-zero agenda — to strangle thousands of otherwise viable businesses.

That untainted free market codex would probably include not having a net-zero agenda, leaving energy policy to the market rather than having one and so on. That is, the free market codex would solve those problems by not allowing an industrial policy to cause them - as the current one does. So there is that to be said for laissez-faire.

This though boggles the mind.

Beijing funnelled about $1 trillion of state cash into setting up venture capital funds to overcome the problem experienced by innovative start-ups: how to scale up production. The funds were meant to hire private sector experts and make a profit as well as deliver supply chain security. Some failed, hiring local officials and wasting cash on political projects. But others generated successes, like the scale-up of NIO, an electric vehicle company that now rivals Tesla and has become the centre of the world’s battery production hub in Hefei.

Beijing took a trillion off taxpayers - a trillion - and ended up with a car company worth $14 billion. This is the sort of success that we’re supposed to emulate?

No, really, just no. We’re fine with the idea of an industrial plan to undo all the mistakes of past industrial plans. But having decided they’re disastrous let’s not go and make new mistakes. Instead let’s do the sensible thing which is to keep politicians out of the business arena near entirely. After all, the reason they’re in politics is because they couldn't cut it in the real world in the first place, right?