Less manufacturing and more tech is no bad thing
Two very different economic stories emerged last week. Britain’s car sales have fallen for the first time in six years, while its capital’s tech companies attracted £2.5billion in investment in 2017 – more than Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Madrid and Dublin combined. Oddly, it was the first that received more attention. In part, this reflects the determination of pro-EU reporters, not least at the BBC, to keep finding bad news. But it also reveals a certain national nostalgia, a belief that hitting metal for a living is somehow more authentic than tapping at a computer. The loss of jobs in steel or shipbuilding is front page news. But who laments the disappearance of video rental employees? Or secretaries or archivists or travel agents or local journalists?
In fact, the shift from heavy manufacturing to services is one that every wealthy country has gone through. The UK made the transition earlier and more thoroughly than most, which partly explains why we are so well-off by global standards. Our economic transition keeps gathering pace. To say that London is now Europe’s tech capital is so banal as to be slightly passé: it is more than four times larger than Paris, its nearest rival. The real question is when it will overtake Silicon Valley.
Shortly before the Brexit referendum, I wrote an article imagining a prosperous post-EU Britain. Among other things, I fantasised about Hoxton, with its so-called “Silicon Roundabout”, becoming a global software capital. Remainers, led by JK Rowling, have been sneering at it ever since. But consider what has happened since the vote. Microsoft, IBM, Amazon and Facebook have all expanded their UK operations. Apple will establish a massive new campus at Battersea Power Station. Google is building a new billion-pound headquarters in King’s Cross. Snapchat has made London its chief international base. And that’s all separate from the huge investments we have seen in such firms as Skyscanner, Improbable, Shazam and ARM.
Note that all these developments have taken place since the referendum – in other words, in the full knowledge that Britain will be leaving the EU. Is it not at least possible that said knowledge influenced the investments? After all, most of those American tech firms have been on the receiving end of fines or legal action from the European Commission, which is committed to what it calls “digital independence” from the USA. Perhaps they have sensibly concluded that an independent Britain will in future offer a friendlier regulatory climate than the EU.
Matt Hancock, the Digital Minister, is well aware that we need to work to keep our lead – not least to ensure that our visa regime allows tech firms to hire the best global talent.
Still, the progress we have made over the past 18 months is extraordinary. Imagine the news the other way around: a slight uptick in car sales versus a major loss of investment in tech.
Now that really would be cause for concern.
The oddest thing about l’affaire Toby Young is the stunning lack of self-awareness it has revealed in his Left-wing critics. Toby, who has founded four free schools and campaigned for years to widen access to universities, was one of 15 people appointed to the board of the new universities regulator, the Office for Students. His appointment led to howls of rage from Labour MPs and Guardian columnists, scandalised that a Tory journalist should have any role in education.
Oddly, none of them complained when Alan Rusbridger, the former Guardian editor, was appointed Principal of Lady Margaret Hall. Rusbridger is one of several non-Tory journalists who head Oxford colleges, including Mark Damazer at St Peter’s, Tim Gardam at St Anne’s and Will Hutton at Hertford. Somerville is headed by a Labour apparatchik, Baroness Royall, and Mansfield by the Labour peer, Baroness Kennedy. Some on the Left have plainly come to think of higher education as their space, and see any Tory involvement, however limited, as an incursion.
All these college heads are distinguished in their fields. But they would surely be no less qualified if they happened to be on the Right. FOLLOW Daniel Hannan on Twitter @DanielJHannan; at telegraph.co.uk/opinion