The Commanding State: The Politics of Competitiveness

Abstract

The question as to whether (and how) to regulate the activities of firms which operate across the borders of nation states is, not surprisingly, a deeply controversial one. In the course of the preceding chapter, we observed the role played by the regional operations of US firms like Ford Motors as well as large British firms in destabilizing the British manufacturing economy in the 1970s vis-à-vis Europe; and also some wider ranging significances of this, as a catalyzing factor in the subsequent onslaughts against Britain’s trade unions, and as a context for later competitiveness debates. We noted too that one of the more obvious concessions in New Labour policy thinking to previous policy trajectories has been to accept, endorse, and even promote the sort of deregulatory measures which its Conservative party predecessors deemed to be a mainstay of industrial policy, to attract and retain investment by firms. On this issue, a definite stance has been adopted and despite the traumas currently being experienced as a consequence of the still unfolding international banking and credit crisis it is far from obvious that this in and of itself will lead to any sort of major policy rethinking among the leadership of the United Kingdom’s main political parties as to the desirability of pursuing competitiveness by courting investment from transnational corporate players via deregulation and easy terms of entry and exit.