The publication of the Government's industrial strategy green paper is welcome – but by trying to run the economy from Whitehall, it misses the devolved framework that makes similar approaches successful overseas.

The green paper is sub-divided into 10 pillars with its big play being a push for new ‘sector deals' through a process similar to devo deal-making. The pillar topics are fairly predictable, and their content is sometimes little more than a summary of current policy, but more fundamentally, the problem with 10 pillars or numerous sector deals is that there is little sense the industrial strategy will allow the whole to add up to more than the sum of its parts.