Mazzonomics isn’t going to work, is it?

The base idea enshrined in the theories of Professor Mazzucato is that the Man from Whitehall does know best. What should be produced, how it should be produced and by whom it should be produced. Ally this knowledge with cross cutting goal oriented capacity building with strict conditionality and we’ll be golden.

The Scottish Government has triggered outrage after revealing that a £175m ferry contract has been awarded to a Polish shipyard instead of struggling local manufacturer Ferguson Marine.

A contract to build seven electric vessels for ferry operator CalMac has been handed to the Remontowa yard in Gdansk, which triumphed over four other bids including one from Clyde-based Ferguson Marine.

The Scottish yard was brought under government control by the ruling Scottish National Party (SNP) in 2019 and has received hundreds of millions of pounds of state aid.

As we’ve found out previously the Scottish Government - which, to be fair, is based upon the idea of not being the Man from Whitehall - managed to organise the delivery of a ferry or two seven years late and in the process bankrupting the shipyard. The ferry company and the shipyard are both owned by, umm, the Scottish Government.

This is not a golden result from cross cutting goal oriented capacity building with strict conditionality.

We now see the next stage of this deployment of the skill and knowledge of government. Despite having gained those hundreds of millions in capital to create the cross cutting goal oriented capacity building with strict conditionality the yard is still not as efficient as some random shipbuilder in Poland.

Mazzonomics isn’t going to work, is it? On the grounds that it doesn’t work already.

Ho Hum. Next idea? Or possibly, don’t recycle ideas from a century ago which didn’t work then either despite Douglas Jay being a very clever man indeed.

Tim Worstall