Recycled Strategy, Recycled Failures: What the New Industrial Plan Reveals About Britain’s Governance Crisis
As Westminster remains engulfed in controversy over the deeply unpopular Welfare Reform Bill, a quieter policy unveiling took place on June 23rd that deserves equal scrutiny: the government finally released its long-delayed industrial strategy. Its muted arrival was overshadowed by the political firestorm surrounding welfare. Was that timing intentional? For all the build-up, the content was familiar. Too familiar.
Despite many delays and promises of bold economic renewal, the new industrial strategy seems to offer little more than a lightly rewritten version of the Conservative government’s 2017 plan, which was quietly shelved soon after publication. This latest offering suggests a systemic failure not of political will, but of institutional design.
A Strategy That Looks Backwards
Much like its predecessor, the new strategy leans heavily on aspirational language and headline themes, innovation, regional growth, skills, sustainability. But its lack of structural change is revealing. The government has recycled many of the same pillars from the abandoned 2017 document offered by the Concervatives.
Policy Continuity in Disguise
Despite a change in government and the rhetoric used in soundbite statements, the strategic architecture remains largely unchanged. Even the language used in the texts to describe the policies is very similar.
These comparisons suggesting the problem lies deeper than policy preference. It lies in the machinery of government itself.
A Policy Machine That Can’t Learn
This repetition is precisely the kind of governance failure outlined in Broken by Design, an article published in this magazine yesterday. It argues that British policymaking has become performative and circular, relying on top-down declarations, siloed departments, and weak delivery systems. Policy, it concludes, is now often crafted for headlines, not results.
The industrial strategy, like the 10-Year NHS Plan also due this week, shows how institutions struggle to evolve, even as conditions change. According to Paul Barnett, the article’s author, the state remains locked in a cycle of announcement, abandonment, and reinvention, largely because it lacks the capacity to learn from its failures or engage meaningfully with those it purports to serve.
Enter the Participatory Learning Network (PLN) Concept
What Broken by Design proposes is not another policy framework but a transformation of the governance model itself. It introduces the concept of Participatory Learning Networks (PLNs) - permanent, cross-sector infrastructures that embed real-time learning and collaboration into policymaking.
Rather than relying on episodic consultations, PLNs would create space for ongoing dialogue between policymakers, business leaders, local authorities, and frontline workers. In the context of industrial strategy, this would mean thins like:
Sectoral learning hubs that evolve plans based on data and local insight.
Workforce councils that co-design skills programmes with educators and employers.
Regional coalitions empowered to align investment with long-term regional priorities.
These are not add-ons. They are essential to transforming Britain’s static strategy process into something capable of delivery.
A Parallel Failure in Health and Welfare
This failure of institutional learning is also likely to be visible in the NHS 10-Year Plan. Early briefings suggest that workforce gaps, system fragmentation, and funding constraints are once again acknowledged, but with no new mechanisms for change.
The same applies to Integrated Care Systems (ICSs). Though promising in design, ICSs have been hamstrung by legacy systems, siloed funding, and a lack of collaborative infrastructure. Without the architecture that a PLN would offer, such initiatives become little more than aspirational initiatives destined to fail.
Welfare reform, meanwhile, is attempting to push through cuts to disability benefits without stakeholder input, threatening to deepen poverty and backlash. This again, not for lack of awareness, but for lack of an institutional model that listens, learns, and adapts.
Conclusion: It's the System, Not the Strategy
The UK does not suffer from a lack of plans. It suffers from a lack of systems that can make those plans matter.
Until governance evolves beyond top-down, template-driven policymaking, every new industrial strategy will look like the last. Participatory Learning Networks offer a path forward, not just to improve specific policies, but to rebuild public trust and institutional credibility. Without that evolution, Britain risks not just stagnation, but strategic irrelevance and long-term stagnation.
References
References
HM Government. (2025). UK Industrial Strategy 2025. Department for Business and Trade. [Official publication released June 23, 2025].
HM Government. (2017). Industrial Strategy: Building a Britain fit for the future. Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy.
[Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/industrial-strategy-building-a-britain-fit-for-the-future]National Audit Office (NAO). (2025). The UK Government’s Approach to Industrial Strategy.
Barnett, P. (2025). Broken by Design: Why Britain’s Policy Machine No Longer Works – And What Must Be Done to Fix It. Enlightened Enterprise Academy.
[https://enlightenedenterprise.academy/broken-by-design]