On being endorsed by Dominic Cummings

The former chief advisor to the Prime Minister, Dominic Cummings, wrote a blogpost yesterday about the need for leave voters to mobilise to make sure the Conservatives are elected on the 12 December. At the end of the post, he writes “Ps. If you’re interested in ideas about how the new government could really change our economy for the better, making it more productive and fairer, you’ll find this paper interesting. It has many ideas about long-term productivity, science, technology, how to help regions outside the south-east and so on, by a professor of physics in Sheffield”. He’s referring to my paper “A Resurgence of the Regions: rebuilding innovation capacity across the whole UK”.

As I said on Twitter,“Pleased (I think) to see my paper “Resurgence of the regions” has been endorsed in Dominic Cummings’s latest blog. Endorsement not necessarily reciprocated, but all parties need to be thinking about how to grow productivity & heal our national divides”.

I provided a longer reaction to a Guardian journalist, which resulted in this story today: Academic praised by Cummings is remain-voting critic of Tory plans. Here are the comments I made to the journalist which formed the basis of the story:

I’m pleased that Dominic Cummings has endorsed my paper “Resurgence of the regions”. I think the analysis of the UK’s current economic weaknesses is important and we should be talking more about it in the election campaign. I single out the terrible record of productivity growth since the financial crisis, the consequences of that in terms of flat-lining wages, the role of the weak economy in the fiscal difficulties the government has in balancing the books, and (as others have done) the profound regional disparities in economic performance across the country. I’d like to think that Cummings shares this analysis – the persistence of these problems, though, is hardly a great endorsement for the last 9.5 years of Conservative-led government.

In response to these problems we’re going to need some radical changes in the way we run our economy. I think science and innovation is going to be important for this, and clearly Cummings thinks that too. I also offer some concrete suggestions for how the government needs to be more involved in driving innovation – especially in the urgent problem we have of decarbonising our energy supply to meet the target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. It’s good that the Conservative Party has signed up to a 2050 Net Zero Greenhouse Gas target, but the scale of the measures it proposes are disappointingly timid – as I explain in my paper, reaching this goal is going to take much more investment, and more direct state involvement in driving innovation to increase the scale and drive the cost down of low carbon energy. This needs to be a central part of a wider industrial strategy.

I welcome all three parties’ commitment to raise the overall R&D intensity of the economy (to 2.4% of GDP by 2027 for the Conservatives, 3% of GDP by 2030 for Labour, 2.4% by 2027 with longer term aspiration for 3% for the Lib Dems). The UK’s poor record of R&D investment compared to other developed countries is surely a big contributing factor to our stagnating productivity. But this is also a stretching target – we’re currently at 1.7%. It’s going to need substantial increases in public spending, but even bigger increases in R&D investment from the private sector, and we’re going to need to see much more concrete plans for how government might get this might happen. Again, my paper has some suggestions, with a particular focus on building new capacity in those parts of the country where very little R&D gets done – and which, not coincidentally, have the worst economic performance (Wales, Northern Ireland, the North of England in particular).

As for Cummings’s views on Brexit: I voted remain, not least because I thought that a “leave” vote would result in a period of very damaging political chaos for the UK. I can’t say that subsequent events have made me think I was wrong on that. I do think that it would be possible for the UK to do ok outside the EU, but to succeed post-Brexit we’ll need to stay close to Europe in matters such as scientific cooperation (preferably through associating with EU science programmes like the European Research Council),and in matters related to nuclear technology. We will need to be a country that welcomes talented people from overseas, and provides an attractive destination for overseas investment – particularly important for innovation, where more than half of the UK’s business R&D is done by overseas owned firms. The need to have a close relationship with our major trading partners will mean that we’ll need to stay in regulatory alignment with the EU (very important, for example, for the chemicals industry) and minimise frictions for industries, like the automotive industry where the UK is closely integrated into European supply chains, and in the high value knowledge based services which are so important for the UK economy. It doesn’t look like that’s the direction of travel the Conservatives are currently going down.

Whatever happens in the next election, anyone who has any ambition to heal the economic and social divides in this country needs to be thinking about the issues I raise in my paper.