In a factory in rural Durham, the government’s commitment to ‘levelling up’ and to manufacturing industry is being tested to destruction. The Hitachi railway manufacturing plant, employing 700 and thousands more in the supply chain, is threatened with closure. Procrastination over HS2, lack of joined up planning for the railway industry and Covid’s negative effect on travel have, together, led to a three-year gap in the company’s order book. The Japanese owners cannot realistically be expected to mothball the plant for three years and so it will most likely close.

I got to visit the plant (along with Lib Dem candidates including Aidan King the prospective Mayor for the North East). I went the day after Keir Starmer had been on a well-publicised visit, making reassuring, if non-committal, comments about the future of the plant under Labour. For me, the visit had deeper significance. A decade ago, I had opened the plant: then, a tent in a muddy field. Attracting Hitachi to build trains in Britain was one of the successes of the Coalition’s Industrial Strategy and, until very recently, it seemed to be an inspired investment decision for Hitachi.

The Industrial Strategy owed its origin, in the face of considerable Tory scepticism, to problems within the railway manufacturing industry in 2011. A decision to choose Siemens to supply the rolling stock from Germany for the Thameslink project had devastated the Bombadier (now Alsthom) plant in Derby. Thousands of job losses beckoned. I visited Derby and felt the full force of union and civic anger. Philip Hammond, then Secretary of State for Transport, was persuaded to take a fresh look at rail procurement practices. Some intelligent planning and sequencing of orders saved Derby at virtually no cost to the taxpayer. An industry supply chain body was established to build up the sector. Hitachi was encouraged to come and invest in the UK.

That experience gave encouragement and momentum to my efforts to establish a comprehensive industrial strategy, embodying long-term thinking and sensible public-private sector collaboration. Much was achieved for the automotive, aerospace, bioscience industries, renewable energy supply chains and much else. When the Lib Dems departed the Coalition there was an unlikely fairy godmother in Theresa May who, with Greg Clark, kept the Industrial Strategy going and doing important work. Then, the chaos of Boris, the ideological arrogance of the Trussites and the insipid listlessness of the Sunak administration have conspired to abandon British industry to its fate at the hands of market forces and government muddle.

Even if Keir Starmer proves to be a fairy godfather and, in office, comes to the rescue of Hitachi, there are problems ahead. First, there is the long tail of Brexit consequentials. The Durham factory was built to make trains for European as well as British gauge tracks. The valuable European market is, however, now effectively closed since we left the Single Market. In theory, there are big opportunities in the emerging markets of Africa, the Middle East and Asia but the emergence of China’s immensely powerful and successful (and subsidised) railway industry has created forbidding competition. The home market should be enough, but only if there is careful planning and coordination of procurement. Senior ministerial engagement is necessary. Yet of the last four Secretaries of State (Grayling, Shapps, Trevelyan, Harper) over eight years, none has bothered to visit Hitachi (to be fair to Ms Trevelyan she only had 7 weeks in the Lettuce Administration).

Making railway rolling stock also depends on building the confidence of key suppliers. I was shocked to see that the aluminium shells within which the carriages are built are imported from Serbia, Serbia? Apparently, there is no British firm capable of (or interested in) fabricating the shells from aluminium sheets. So, they must be hauled from the Balkans. Another key component is the batteries. There is a happier story here. The high spec. batteries are made in the Northeast at the Envision factory which also supplies Nissan in Sunderland. Envision is Chinese, reflecting Chinese dominance in battery technology. The investment is good for Britain, but we are unlikely to remain an attraction for Chinese investors if UK politicians continue the current China-baiting to please our friends in Washington.

Railway manufacturing presumes the good health of the railways. And a healthy, efficient, railway system is a key step towards decarbonising the transport sector. It helps to keep people off the roads and, if powered by ‘green’ electricity or hydrogen, gives substance to ideas around ‘green’ transformation.

As it happens, Starmer’s visit was part of a Labour, pre-election, railway day on the political grid and his key announcement was the renationalisation of the railways. Having myself arrived in the region on a train that was one and a half hours late from Birmingham – apparently that was quite good going – I shared the views of fellow passengers that renationalisation must be a good idea.

What, however, seems to have been forgotten is that the railways are already mostly renationalised after George Osborne (surreptitiously) took over Railtrack ten years ago. Railtrack provides the track and other infrastructure whose failings are as likely to cause delays as the failings of the private franchise operators. Furthermore, as Ed Balls has pointed out, any future rail subsidies to improve nationalised railways will have to compete directly with schools and hospitals in bun-fights at the Treasury. And the government will be blamed for every late train, every strike and every accident (some of us are old enough to remember the national joke called British Rail).

Moreover, the Treasury will severely ration new investment which will force the publicly owned companies to push up fares to generate investable profits. To stop rail passengers migrating onto the roads It will be necessary to restore the petrol duty escalator which successive governments have frozen to placate motorists. Then we shall see who is willing to stand up and be counted in defence of railways and train makers.

* Sir Vince Cable is the former MP for Twickenham and was leader of the Liberal Democrats from 2017 until 2019. He also served in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills from 2010 to 2015.