Oh come on, seriously?

We’re doing this one again?

A target of building 1.3m cars a year is likely to be missed unless a large new UK factory is built in the coming years, an industry group has said, as Keir Starmer prepares to hold trade talks in China.

Labour aims to have 1.3m vehicles rolling off production lines by 2035, a central ambition of its industrial strategy.

The usual collection of polytechnic lecturers, lawyers and grievance studies graduates* has greater insight into the correct geographic location for car making than all the tens of thousands of car executives paid and trained to make that decision?

Really?

Sure, by all means make Britain again a place to make things - lower energy prices, relax planning laws, stop teaching grievance studies to make room for engineers to get educated - but actual numerical targets for the output of a specific type of manufacture? Who is the publisher of this strategy, GOSPLAN?

As Einstein (possibly) said, insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result. Doesn’t anyone even remember British Leyland?

Tim Worstall

*No, there’s not much party difference these days