In the speech launching her campaign to be Conservative Party Leader, Theresa May outlined proposals to “make the economy work for everyone”, which included many ideas related to industrial strategy:
I want to see an energy policy that emphasises the reliability of supply and lower costs for users. A better research and development policy that helps firms to make the right investment decisions. More Treasury-backed project bonds for new infrastructure projects. More house building. A proper industrial strategy to get the whole economy firing. And a plan to help not one or even two of our great regional cities but every single one of them.
On corporate takeovers she stated:
A proper industrial strategy wouldn’t automatically stop the sale of British firms to foreign ones, but it should be capable of stepping in to defend a sector that is as important as pharmaceuticals is to Britain.
On corporate governance and executive pay she stated:
And I want to see changes in the way that big business is governed. The people who run big businesses are supposed to be accountable to outsiders…So if I’m Prime Minister, we’re going to change that system – and we’re going to have not just consumers represented on company boards, but employees as well.
…I want to make shareholder votes on corporate pay not just advisory but binding. I want to see more transparency, including the full disclosure of bonus targets and the publication of “pay multiple” data: that is, the ratio between the CEO’s pay and the average company worker’s pay. And I want to simplify the way bonuses are paid so that the bosses’ incentives are better aligned with the long-term interests of the company and its shareholders.
The Economist summarised the speech as follows:
Although the details are yet to be fleshed out, Mrs May gave some indication of what [the industrial strategy] might entail in her Birmingham speech: raising productivity, a commitment to infrastructure projects (such as the north-south HS2 railway), more house-building and a regional policy that will “help not one or even two of our great regional cities but every single one of them”—perhaps a dig at the previous government’s championing of Manchester, Birmingham’s great rival.
