The argument was made at length by Aditya Chakrabortty in the Guardian in his piece Why Osborne Should Pay Heed to Our Olympic Triumph. The article is good on how UK sport turned itself around following the dismal showing in Atlanta, but making the jump to 'picking winners' in an industrial context is a stretch. The end of the piece sums up the position -
Cabinet ministers bang on about growing our manufacturing base, and yet their solution is to spread a little bit of money very thinly. To do otherwise, they claim, would be to pick winners and we know how badly that ends. Really, there's something wrong with picking winners? Tell that to Bradley Wiggins.
A similar phrasing has been used by Brendan Barber as quoted by the BBC in the run up to his speech at the TUC conference in Brighton. According to the BBC
In his speech, Mr Barber will say it is wrong of the government to say it "can't pick winners" in helping companies and instead leaving the market to decide. He will add: "Tell that that to Bradley [Wiggins], Jessica [Ennis] or Mo [Farah], all supported by targeted funding.
This version of argument ignores in a wilful way the complexity of support, encouragement and assessment that has occurred in sport before any of the leading athletes see a penny or pound of public funding. In supporting a specific individual with a track record there is a basis for that investment and an understanding of when the investment is not working and so it should be cancelled.
Supporting industries just does not work like this. The time frames are different, the amount of information you have prior to investing is vastly different, and most importantly the size of the bets you need to make and the portfolio of bets you can take are completely different.
Now to be clear I am a supporter of activist industrial policy, based on strong dialogue between industry and government and with a shared sense of purpose. But when we start having these kinds of statements, returning again to the dead language of 'picking winners' we are doing nobody any favours.
The UK needs an activist industrial policy, but even more than that it needs a frank and apolitical debate on how to support current and emerging industries. Without a clear sense of how government is working with industry, an understanding of how the benefits of the new industries will be shared, and above all else an understanding that neither side can move the economy forward alone, this sterile debate will continue to the detriment of the country and everyone struggling to find work and move forward.
Ask Wiggins, Ennis or any of the other elite athletes - they may be the stars but they would not be able to do it without the support of an expert and committed team. That's the real lesson of the summer.
