By stewartb

It may be hard for many – perhaps the majority(?) – of folk in Scotland who are not glued to the weekly goings on in politics and the constant implementation of economic, social and environmental policies by the Scottish Government to resist the feeling that Scotland is crap. So often that’s the message relentlessly pushed. And on days like today in Westminster with the ‘King’s Speech’, it may seem like we in North Britain live in a backwater.

It takes determination and effort to fill the ‘positivity void’ created and sustained by the BBC and most of the mainstream media that supposedly serves Scotland. Hopefully every little countering, positive insight can help.

On July 17, 2024 CityAM has this headline: ‘‘We have to rethink the narrative’: Mariana Mazzucato on how Labour should address an era of crisis’ In the article we learn this: ‘Starmer has jumped on the ideas of Mariana Mazzucato [above] and the work done by the institute she set up, the Institute of Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP).’ (my emphasis)

‘The IIPP is trying to refashion the way policymakers think about economics to enable governments to meet these looming challenges. ‘

And: ‘Starmer has wholeheartedly embraced the concept of missions. The Labour manifesto included five missions, including growing the economy and fixing the NHS, which will define Starmer’s tenure’. Adding: ‘There’s no doubting where he got the idea from. In a New Statesman article Starmer cited Mazzucato by name. Not long ago Starmer and Mazzucato spoke for two hours on the concept of mission-driven government.’

The Telegraph also ran a story (by Matt Oliver) entitled ‘The star economist who inspired Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘missions’. Its states ‘The University College London (UCL) academic’s signature idea – “mission-driven” government – is about to be put into practise by Sir Keir Starmer following Labour’s landslide election victory.’

Mariana Mazzucato is professor in the economics of innovation and public value at University College London and founding director of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. She is clearly someone who’s views are regarded as credible and important. She has just co-written an article for Social Europe (July 17) entitled ‘What Labour needs to succeed – Labour’s mission-oriented industrial strategy for the UK requires a restructuring of how government operates.’

Interestingly, in it she writes this: ‘The UK government can find useful models in the London Borough of Camden’s community-wealth fund and the Scottish National Investment Bank (which were informed by our institute’s work), as well as Germany’s KfW development bank, the Brazilian Development Bank and the Canadian Infrastructure Bank.’

The Scottish National Investment Bank? What’s that I hear lot’s of voters in Scotland asking? How many in Scotland know of what it does? How many could even conceive of it being a forerunner (launched in 2020) of – far less identified as a ‘useful model’ for – the new Labour government and its much-vaunted mission-oriented industrial strategy for the whole of the UK?

However, in the CityAM article Professor Mazzucato expresses doubt about Labour’s intentions: ‘One of the big obstacles preventing Labour from fully embracing a mission-oriented approach is the current set of fiscal rules, she says. Chancellor Rachel Reeves has committed herself to “iron-clad” fiscal rules, which will prevent the government from making meaningful investments unless it also raises taxes.

‘Andy Haldane, formerly chief economist at the Bank of England, said that Labour’s current public spending plans amount to little more than “a weekend’s GDP“.

‘Mazzucato urged the government to confront its investment-phobia. “To get the economy growing, the government needs to see the role of public investment as investment and not a cost,” she said. “I just worry that, if the narrative continues that ‘there’s no money, we have to wait for growth to occur’ they are forgetting that growth actually occurs through bold ambitious public investment, which catalyses private sector investment,” she said.’

On 28 August 2020, the Scottish Government published this: ‘Scottish National Investment Bank missions: consultation‘. It noted: ‘Support for a Mission-Oriented Approach – The Bank will adopt a mission-oriented approach when providing finance, with missions set by the Scottish Government as recommended in the Bank’s Implementation Plan’. And it acknowledged: ‘In 2019, A Mission-Oriented Framework for the Scottish National Investment Bank (written by Professor Mariana Mazzucato and Laurie Macfarlane from the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP)) was published.’