Honda shows why Britain must focus on home-grown talent

As a child, I recall being taken by my father to witness a helicopter that was landing in the town, to bring the Very Important Boss who was flying in to open his new factory.

The facility, complete with landing pad, was on the outskirts, on land that had been made cheap and available by the council. I’d never seen a helicopter before – it was the late 1960s – and the whole event was exciting.

Sure enough, it appeared out of the sky, and the Great Businessman duly cut the ribbon to applause, shook the hands of the assembled local dignitaries, and unveiled a plaque. It was all so promising, suggesting a bright economic outlook, of further diversity and investment.

By the time I’d left school, not that much later, the site was abandoned, the “H” overgrown with weeds.

Things had not gone as well as hoped; the market had proved more difficult. The Super Provider’s successor, sitting in some distant headquarters, had simply studied a piece of paper, and put a red line through my town. All that hope and effort, and yes, financial inducement, had been reduced to nothing.

The news about Honda and Nissan, the former closing its factory in Swindon, and the latter deciding not to make its new SUV in Sunderland, threatening that plant’s long-term viability, reminded me of this sad episode.

Other factory gates in Britain will be locked up as well. They will of course join a long list of those that have already gone, as our manufacturing capacity has dwindled. But this batch will be different. They’re more new, more current. Until recently, they were being upheld as evidence of Britain’s future prospects, as a player on the engineering world stage to match the likes of Germany, Japan and South Korea.

For decades now, as the great industrial sites of yesteryear gave up the ghost, in steel, engineering, textiles, mining, and shipbuilding, successive governments have focused on attracting replacements.

We’ve spread out, across the globe, trying to find corporations prepared to come here, to spend their money here. FDI – foreign direct investment – has become a mantra in Whitehall.

Much of that push has been concentrated on the motor sector, with the results we’ve just seen. But it’s been broader, so as, seemingly, to embrace anything that comes attached with a production line. Our politicians have become smitten with having their photographs taken alongside people in luminous jackets and yellow hats. If there is to be a press conference on the economy it must be held on a factory floor, with an audience drawn from the media and employees in overalls.

God knows what the bemused, hapless workforce think of it all, as some bigwig from London lectures them on an aspect of policy that until this moment they’ve not cared two hoots about. And probably never will again.

I’ve often wondered how it happens: are they ordered to sit and stand in dutiful rows, to appear earnest and interested, and on pain of instant dismissal not to smirk or gesture? Is their reward a slap-up meal (these events often take place during their lunch hour to hit the midday news bulletins)?

On numerous foreign missions in search of FDI, prime ministers and carefully selected entourages have flown thousands of miles, shaken numerous hands, posed for countless pictures, consumed tonnes of canapés and sipped gallons of cheap white wine. Excited councils and development bodies have found parcels of land and offered “special” deals. Then, later, the recipients turn round and do this. Ungrateful bunch.

And uncaring. The unpalatable truth of FDI or any investment directed from afar, is that it’s much easier to put a cross against something not on your domestic turf, that does not affect those people you see day in day out. Given a choice, the far-flung location or project will always be the loser. It’s human nature.

Assurances will be given and great speeches will be delivered about putting down roots – but as soon as doubt clouds the horizon, when new pressures crowd in and a plug has to be pulled, it will be the one far away.

What we don’t do as a nation is direct enough of our encouragement to home-grown talent, to entrepreneurs created in the UK. Too much of the effort has been steered towards the wrong targets.

We, or rather our politicians and their minders and officials, do not seem to appreciate that offices, design studios and laboratories are also capable of producing winners. We enjoy huge international kudos as a service economy yet we do not play to those strengths, to determine how we can make it even better. Instead, the polished factory floor and gleaming premises on ring-roads with attendant flag-poles signalling yet another case of FDI, and watching TV cameras, seem to matter more.

The Honda and Nissan announcements have come on the back of Dyson declaring it will be relocating to Singapore. The reaction to Sir James Dyson’s move would have been less marked if the technology and household appliances firm was not so alone. Imagine if there had been five or 10 companies similar to Dyson – all world beaters, all leaders in their fields, all using tech and all employing thousands, all remaining in the UK? Then, the Dyson switch would not have been so bad. That’s what we so urgently require. By all means, continue seeking FDI, but develop and entice those closer to us as well.

Chris Blackhurst is a former editor of The Independent, and director of CTF Partners, the campaigns, strategic, crisis and reputational communications advisory firm