Decline of Traditional British Manufacturing Industries

Comment on Should Britain Leave the European Union Poll? by David.

What a load of anti EU and anti British rubbish!

The main reason why our traditional manufacturing industries have struggled considerably is the cost of living in the UK is far higher than places like China and some EU countries where the cost of living and quality of living is much lower (we can not compete on labor costs).

If you want a high standard of living in Britain, businesses have to pay relatively high wages. High wages means businesses that rely heavily on manual labor that can be run almost anywhere is the world are going to tend to move to developing countries where labor costs are far lower.

As long as British people want a high standard of living traditional industries that rely on ‘brute force’ labor are going to slowly, but surly move away from Britain.

The only way to turn things around would be to do what the Conservatives would do if they could get away with it, remove the national minimum wage and many of the protections British workers now have thanks to the Labour government. Then we might be able to compete on price with countries like China! Is that what you want, low wages and low quality working conditions?

It can’t be stopped, but it can be slowed and I think successive governments (especially Conservative governments) haven’t done nearly enough to slow the trend.

This is why the Labour government talks a lot about the new industries (green low carbon industries), if we are to keep our country moving forward, we have to look forward to these new industries where it’s not about hard labor to get a job done, but a highly skilled work force.

Has the Labour government done enough to promote British business, no, they can always do more, but it is no where near as bad as doomsayers like yourself make out.

This is a great country to live in, I’ve gone through hard time in the past, but now we have a very comfortable life, but if something ever went wrong I know the Labour governments policies have put a really strong safety net under hard working British families.

David