Sure enough, top of the pile is the commitment by Australian investment firm Macquarie to plough £12bn by 2030 into various infrastructure projects including “offshore wind in Lincolnshire and north Scotland, gigabit broadband in rural England and hydrogen hubs in Southampton and Orkney”.
All good, healthy stuff. But, while these investments may be new, Macquarie’s interest in the UK is anything but. In the very next sentence, the Government press release points out that Macquarie has invested more than £50bn in the UK in the last 15 years.
This means the Aussie firm has invested about £3.3bn a year over the past decade and a half and is now planning to invest about £1.5bn a year over the next eight. Hardly a cause for celebration, surely?
We all know that most of the Telegraph is of the management Tory kind. They don’t particularly, or even really, believe in markets but in plans. Just plans made by Tories rather than by Labour. So, there must be a plan for business investment. There must be more of it – despite the fact that this is a cost, not a benefit – and where’s the plan for that then, eh?
Except it’s entirely possible to have a perfectly decent plan without, in fact, having a plan. Set up the system so that folk who want to invest can then see what happens. As with the Australians here. Hmm, so, that’s the amount of investment that comes with having a sensible investment regime, is it? Well, given that it’s the market outcome it’s the right outcome, isn’t it?