Economist interview with Brown

This close to the election things were always going to get tight, but they've tightened up more than anyone thought. With that in mind, here is a transcript of the Economist interviewing Brown on the challenges facing Britain as it heads into the election. For those of us who work on this kind of thing there are interesting statements around industrial policy deep in there, such as -

"And of course you also need a modern industrial policy. That is not the same as the old style of industrial policies. But I’ve just been at a conference of 250 investors in Britain, and what they want to know, is what we are going to do about infrastructure? What are we going to do about digitalisation? What’s going to happen over skills? What’s going to happen over the supply of labour? And science, they want to know got to we’re going to do about science, [in] which we’ve doubled investment over the past ten years. They want to know what we are going to do in all these areas. The old industrial policy is over, but a modern partnership between business and Government on key strategic issues is an essential element of the future direction of our country."

The debate on what industrial policy is, let alone whether it is good for the country, continues ...

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