The Gaps Ministers Have Not Filled
Start with the meeting. MPs in the Reindustrialisation Research Group, known in Westminster as ReRG, sit down with Sally Jameson, the Cabinet Office minister — the UK government department that coordinates the work of other ministries — on Wednesday to set out their concerns about the prime minister’s long-term strategy. The worry is that Andy Burnham’s 10-year plan for government will not be radical or detailed enough. Many of the group’s members represent “red wall” seats — former industrial constituencies in the north and Midlands that helped Labour win its 2024 landslide. Access to ministers, by the group’s own account, has been good; what has not arrived is the document they were promised.
The sharpest concern is sectoral. Members of the group are particularly worried about the prime minister’s commitment to reviving Britain’s heavy industries, which they argue are being crushed by high energy prices and a lack of government support. The complaint is not that the government has stayed silent about manufacturing — it is that the words have not turned into lower costs for the companies that burn the most power. That sits inside a wider anxiety in parts of the Labour party that a plan billed so loudly could land well below the expectations Burnham has set for it.
Andy MacNae, who heads the group, said: “There are a lot of gaps in the government’s reindustrialisation strategy which are not yet filled. The 10-year plan is a chance to fill them, but in the briefings we have been given that is not what we are seeing.” [1]. His warning is blunt: “The risk is we don’t see reindustrialisation at all, and continue to see deindustrialisation” — the steady loss of manufacturing capacity and jobs. [1]. Jonathan Hinder, another member of the group, attacks the vocabulary first: “Making reindustrialisation cannot just be about political slogans. We are going in the wrong direction and we need pretty drastic action, but we are not yet seeing that from this government.” [1].”
A Budget That Paid Letterboxes, Not Plants
Burnham has billed his 10-year plan as the defining blueprint for what he wants to achieve in government. The stated intent is substantial: bringing utilities under public control, reducing bills, and establishing a national care service. MPs had been told to expect the document before the end of the year. Last week the prime minister signalled that it could be delayed until January.
Then comes the distance between agenda and instrument. Burnham has suggested industry will sit at the heart of his economic agenda. The chancellor, John Healey — the finance minister who presents the budget — promised at this year’s Labour conference to bring in “a new age of industrialisation”. A conference pledge is a promise; a budget line is what changes a plant’s costs.
The budget is where the argument hardened. Before the statement, the group called on Healey to expand the British industrial competitiveness scheme, which reduces energy costs for about 10,000 businesses. The chancellor instead used his budget to announce a £100 council tax rebate — a local tax charged on homes, collected by the municipal authority — to help households pay their energy bills over the winter. He did not announce changes to the business support scheme. So ten thousand firms kept the relief they already had, and households got a hundred pounds off a local tax bill.
The asks that follow are specific. The group wants the 10-year plan to carry immediate energy bill support for industrial companies. It wants a minister for reindustrialisation. It wants No 10 North, a Downing Street office based in Manchester, empowered to oversee the agenda. Underneath those requests sits a procedural fear: briefings given by ministers in recent days are read by members as pointing to a modest document, one subject to lengthy consultation rather than decision.
Who Holds The Pen On Ten Years
Many are unclear who is leading the process of writing the plan.
The consultancy question has sharpened the suspicion. Many in the group are worried about the involvement of Boston Consulting Group in drawing up the plan. The firm previously employed Burnham’s chief of staff, James Purnell, to help draw up the plan, and Downing Street maintains that BCG is providing one consultant only. One member of the group is scathing: “The idea that BCG are going to be involved in reindustrialising Britain feels like a tragic joke.” [1].
Burnham’s answer to the downbeat briefings is that they misdescribe the product. In comments to the Economist last week he argued: “People are underestimating the significance of this. There’s been briefing around this week, inaccurate briefing … to try and play [it] down. I will lay out my very clear vision for Britain, and it will be substantial, and it will also be, in my view, compelling because I am weaving the different threads together.” [1]
