Funding the Future Why did Britain stop making?
Nov 22, 2025
The discussion delves into the consequences of prioritizing finance over manufacturing for decades, leading to unemployment and hollowed towns. Manufacturing is highlighted as essential for fostering skills, innovation, and social stability. The impact of Thatcherism in dismantling industry is critiqued, along with the drawbacks of foreign takeovers and short-term finance. A call for robust regional public investment banks and strategic tax reforms to encourage productive investments is made. The importance of integrating care, education, and research into modern industrial strategies is also emphasized.
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Finance Replaced Making
- Richard Murphy argues four decades of policy treated finance as the path to national wealth over manufacturing.
- That shift left the UK dependent on imports, property bubbles, and speculative hot money rather than productive capacity.
Manufacturing Creates Multiplier Value
- Manufacturing builds skills, design expertise, innovation and provides satisfying, stable apprenticeships.
- Those multiplier effects strengthen local economies and affect social and political stability.
Decline's Visible Social Costs
- Industrial decline has hollowed out towns and contributed to despair that fuels support for the far right.
- Murphy links economic loss to visible social consequences not captured by GDP statistics.