The UK and Japan have confirmed a workplan for industrial cooperation, allowing two advanced economies to demonstrate that even collaboration requires a detailed plan for becoming collaborative.
The Industrial Strategy Partnership covers advanced manufacturing, automotive, clean energy, life sciences, quantum technology and cyber security. It also covers the diplomatic art of meeting again to assess progress before deciding what the next meeting should achieve.
The announcement follows earlier economic dialogue and confirms a first tranche of activity, including support for investment in each other’s economies. The tranche is expected to produce tangible benefits for businesses, once those benefits have completed their journey through the proper channels and found someone authorised to describe them as tangible.
In London and Tokyo, officials opened matching folders containing the partnership’s main areas and directions. One folder was labelled delivery. The other was labelled how delivery will be recognised. Both were placed inside a larger folder marked second tranche, which was then sent to a meeting about prioritising focus.
Percy Flowchart San, the fictional flowchart official, welcomed the announcement with a reassuring diagram in which every arrow led to another arrow. The partnership now possessed directions, sub directions and a visual explanation of why none of them could be mistaken for a promise. The diagram was praised for leaving no decision unprocessed.
The governments also intend to cooperate on trade digitalisation, space, defence industries and creative industries. This gives the partnership enough sectors to sound comprehensive while allowing every department to claim that the successful part belongs to it. Somewhere, a spreadsheet has been promoted to international diplomacy.
The next Strategic Economic Policy and Trade Dialogue will assess progress and identify a second tranche of activity. Until then, the first tranche will remain focused on delivery, the partnership will remain focused on the first tranche and businesses will remain focused on locating the part where anything begins.
By the time the final document was approved, it had acquired a workplan, a delivery framework and an action for reviewing both. The only missing item was a plan for stopping the plan from becoming the main economic output. It is now being drafted by a committee whose first task is to agree whether drafting counts as progress.
Real story: Department for Business and Trade.
