It's time to be serious – Scotland needs partners

It seems like self-sabotage to have the chance of a major industrial plant in Scotland and to throw that chance away. It is time we were more aware of the reality of our position as a manufacturing nation and recognised that to develop, we can’t start from scratch.

I do not believe that the Ming Yang wind turbine factory that might have come to Scotland was a national security threat. That just isn't credible to me. What I think is true is that it would disrupt the UK's strategy for international relations – but banning this development in Scotland because Donald Trump will hit the roof if he hears 'China', 'Wind turbine factory' and 'Scotland' in the same sentence is not national security, wether he threatens Nato or not.

Still, Starmer's calamitous delusion that he is a 'Trump whisperer' comes above all else in Britain so we are stuck with a great and real opportunity that is going to be blocked by Tony Blair Institute ideologues. So the question stands out; 'if not this, what?'.

What I want to argue in this piece is that it is time for Scotland to grow up, to be realistic, to accept where we are, where we aren't and where we should be – and then develop strategies on the basis of all these factors. And if we do we will arrive at an overwhelming conclusion – we have let the rot sink so deep into our economy that we need partners to help us rebuild.

Let's be realistic; Scotland was an engineering giant and now it isn't. I was born into a world where we still saw ourselves as makers, builders, launchers – but by the time I was going to university in 1990, Glasgow's industrial past was a heritage business. Get a t-shirt with the Finnieston Crane on it and then go for a cappuccino.

The sorry picture at Alexander Dennis is typical now. I don't think I'll detain you with lists of our industrial decline, of bold-sounding political speeches (they're been promising to reindustrialise since 2007), of failed projects, of lost renewable manufacturing capabilities. There is little to say; the political promises are all an illusion, the decline is very real.

But it is an example of 'industrial resurgence' which should be the real learning point here – the Fergusson's Shipyard rebirth and then near death experience, the result of another ill-thought-through political promise which was all self-aggrandisement, no strategy. Things went wrong with ferry building mainly because of piss-poor commissioning and hair-brained specifications.

But it also reveals a core problem; you can't down tool for a generation, pick them up and crack on where you left off. For a start, skills are lost. Secondly, the world moves on and you have to catch up – you can't just weld your way out of every problem in 2026. But it is the third aspect that people fail to understand; manufacturing relies on soft skills as well as hard skills.

Let me give you an example; everyone knows how modern batteries are made. It's public knowledge. You can go and do a web search and everything you need to know is there. You can also go and grab a Yotam Ottolenghi recipe and you'll also have everything you need to know (but I guarantee you won't have all the ingredients...).

The point is that the food you produce won't taste like his, and the battery you produce will be rubbish. It's not just about recipes, it's not just about the core skills (I too can sauté onions and squeeze lemon), it's about soft skills. In the case of a battery, it is either world-leading or utterly average based on tiny changes in the balance of 'ingredients' and subtle alterations in structure which enable better heat management.

Those you cannot Google. Someone found them from long, long trial and error and they're not going to tell you all about it.

In fact, the skills are even softer than that. I could go back on one of my long rants about Toyota's 'Stop the Line' policy, but there are really only two things you need to know about it – it works, and you would never, ever have discovered it unless you have experience of running a complex production line.

Or let me put it another way; if Scotland can just pick it up and do it tomorrow with no learning, no experience, no deep knowledge, it probably isn't really worth doing. We are not an economy that should be dealing in simplicity. If things are simple then your competitive advantage comes from the cheapness of your labour or the effectiveness of your localised supply chains or the impact of your previous investment.

(This point is really important – when I did a study visit to a battery research laboratory where I learned all of the above, I asked them why basically only China makes really good batteries at scale. Battery manufacture is mostly automated, so labour costs have nothing to do with it. The answer was simple; they made the investment, the west didn't, and now it is too expensive to catch up when the Chinese product is so good and so cheap.)

So how do we learn? We have about three options. The first is that we are patient, that we get back at the bottom of the ladder and climb slowly like those above did. The second is to poach, to try and find teams of people who have learned the soft knowledge and try and recruit them. The third is to partner, to find people who know how to do it and develop joint enterprises.

There is a a place for patience, but not at scale. As an example, organic plastic development has moved forward at a faster pace outside Scotland, but not so much that catching up is impossible. We have the natural resources so there is a strong case for being patient and getting on with it.

There is some place for the poaching, but you need to be realistic. If someone is good at it because they've been working in a serious player, unless they really, really like golf and rain, why come here for a risky start-up? It will still be necessary, but let's not kid ourselves that it is a large-scale solution to our industrial malaise.

“It is time we got over the geopolitics and face the truth about ourselves - we need partners”

So that leaves partnering. I think of this as the Norwegian Oil Example. When Norway discovered oil it had no oil engineers in the country, but unlike with Scotland they didn't just throw up their hands and give it all to foreign corporations. They brought in oil engineering consultancies on a build-and-train basis. Those consultancies built the infrastructure and trained a domestic workforce at the same time.

Norway was industrially self-sufficient in a decade. This is the realistic model for Scotland, to work with partners. We live in a different world than the one when Norway discovered oil so it may look different now, but the principle remains the same – we need to learn on the job from people who have more experience of doing the thing we want to do.

Now for some brutal reality; who are these partners? For a start, they're mostly not in Britain. I mean what do we want to learn? Risky financial speculation? But the bigger point is that they're not in the US either. Unless we want bad software or lessons in outsourcing, nothing that we'd want to do is currently done well by the US.

Might they be in Europe? Well, yes, in some instances they are or could be. I actually think often about this – what would I like Scotland to do economically, and then who can I think of that might partner with us to do that?

As you probably know, I believe that manufacturing household appliances in Scotland is feasible if we make very, very good ones that are long lasting and can be repaired and the financial model for them is leasing so the cost is spread over the lifecycle, making them cheaper over the piece.

And if that was the case, there are potentially credible European partners. Well, credible German partners at least. Both Bosch and Miele produce high quality household appliances in Germany. In the case of Miele they make the very best available – so much so that Miele owns its own iron forge to make particularly high-grade steel for its production process.

If you were to say 'our goal is to have most of the country leasing excellent, high-quality goods like this and there is a guaranteed order book from our National Leasing Company', I'd have imagined you could make a joint partnership work.

But – and this is my point – where else would you look? Go on, try and not say China. Try and come up with another manufacturing powerhouse who can do what Chinese industry can do? At the quality they do it? At the speed they do it? At the price they do it? You can't, can you?

This reality instantly becomes something else. Apparently we can 'trust' Saudi Arabia to be a good partner and can overlook the occasional bone saw, but if you say 'China' the foreign policy establishment goes mad. I don't trust the Communist Party of China particularly, but I don't trust the government of the United States of America at all right now.

If our criteria is 'we want to work with industrialists, but only vegan Buddhists who are good feminists and who really, really love Nato', we're going to be fishing in a small pool. It is an uncomfortable reality that working with unpleasant people is the way of the world. The only reason Saudi or US unpleasantness is OK but Chinese unpleasantness isn't is petty war-mongering geopolitics.

I am no fan of China's political system, but I am a massive, massive fan of its industrial system. It is deeply, deeply impressive. And pretending that we can avoid China isn't just silly, it is utterly juvenile. Wake up! The world is running away from the US right now and it isn't going to run back. Now that Trump has ceded permanent control of the Strait of Hormuz to Iran, they are charging a toll to ships for safe passage – in Yuan.

Why? I know you might think it is just politics, but it isn't. Iran wants Yuan and not Dollars because there is nothing Iran wants to buy in Dollars and lots and lots they want to buy with Yuan. That is the reality.

I don't even nearly want to become a colony of China, but don't start moralising at me. To be a colony of the US we have to give Israel free reign to carry out the most heinous war crimes. Geopolitics is a nasty process of turning a blind eye (though there ought to be limits). I certainly think Chinese presence in Scotland should be quarantined and managed carefully.

But I want to put the challenge back. It is Labour politicians (and, bizarrely, the Scottish Greens) who want to keep China out of Scotland. So what is the alternative strategy? Do you think we can survive without reindustrialising? Well say so. We'd be a failing nation, but at least we'd know.

Do you think we can be patient and develop organically (and slowly) at some point in the future? Do you think we can poach our way into the future? Or do you have some alternative version of partnership working?

Realistically, hanging onto the coattails of America is not helping Scotland one bit. It is time we got over the geopolitics and face the truth about ourselves. We need partners. Our economy requires it.