Given that David Cameron has spent his week in South East Asia, in order to promote trade links between the region and Britain, it only seems apt that Nicholas Comfort’s Surrender: How British Industry Gave Up The Ghost is named book of the week.
Nicholas wrote this week that David Cameron would have to pursue a gentle approach if he was to make progress in strengthening trade links between the two regions.
Surrender tells the story of how it came to be that Britain now relies so heavily on foreign cooperation in order to support our own trade. British industry at the start of the New Elizabethan Age looked a world leader. It led the world in the production of cars, trucks and buses, heavy machinery, aircraft, ships, chemicals, locomotives, household appliances and heavy electrical goods, and looked poised to do the same with aircrafts and computers. Its export trade was thriving. Now, sixty years on, many of these industries have virtually disappeared, while those of our competitors have flourished. Much of what remains is under foreign ownership. We have lost most of our export markets, and many of the goods essential to our economy have to be imported. How did this happen? The traditional explanation for Britain's loss of competitiveness blames outdated working practices, failure to invest and modernise, bad management, bloody-minded unions, the loss of the Empire and the ability of Germany and Japan to start again from scratch after the war. All this is true, but the picture is far more complex.