Responding to the recent UK Budget, the First Minister bemoaned the inability of Westminster to "protect Scottish industry and jobs", and other Scottish government ministers used similar language in debates around the announcement of Mossmorran’s closure.
A couple of weeks later, Douglas Alexander MP, Secretary of State for Scotland, justified the UK government’s £120 million contribution to a five-year deal with Ineos to retain ethylene production at Grangemouth on the basis that it would "protect" 500 jobs.
Strikingly, in a recent parliamentary exchange about the oil and gas industry, Russell Findlay MSP, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, offered the First Minister the votes necessary to "protect thousands of Scottish jobs".
There seems to be a broad political consensus that "protecting" Scottish jobs and industries is a legitimate and desirable objective for government at all levels. This begs fundamental questions about economic development strategy in Scotland: is it possible for the Scottish and/or UK governments to protect Scottish jobs and industries? And, if so, when does it make sense to try to do so?
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Protection is a loaded word in economics. In many ways 2025 was the year when it became front and centre of debate. Trump imposed his "reciprocal" tariffs which were in no way reciprocal and calculated using the most absurd methodology. The world inevitably responded with varying degrees of dismay and hostility.
There is at least some kind of logic in the US considering protectionist policies. It is a very large economy and therefore less reliant on international trade than smaller nations. The is no coherent strategic rationale for tariffs as deployed by Trump but the US also has the wherewithal to provide massive subsidies and tax breaks to encourage or protect activity in sectors deemed strategic for economic or security purposes.
This is what Biden – in my view, on balance, sensibly – was trying to achieve in rebuilding capacity in semiconductors and quickening the green industrial transition through the Inflation Reduction Act and other legislation. It’s a risky strategy but one with potentially significant economic, social, environmental and, ultimately, political, pay-offs.
The Scottish government can’t replicate such policies at anything approaching a similar scale and it’s also beyond the collective resources of the Scottish and UK governments to do so. Talking about "protecting industries" in any meaningful sense at the level of devolved policy doesn’t wash.
Nor is it convincing to talk about protecting jobs if the mechanism is throwing money at short-term fixes which embed awful incentives in the system. What do we think the huge global conglomerate Ineos will ask for in five years’ time?
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But protecting the long-term interests of workers is absolutely the right thing to do. How might this be achieved?
A long-term strategy to develop Scotland’s economy and protect the interests of workers would have three main components. The first is the development and implementation of a practical industrial strategy – best done with the close cooperation of government, business, unions and other civic interests – which identifies the best long-term bets for public investment and places tight parameters around which enterprises should receive direct financial support and when.
Successful implementation will depend on the ability to confront difficult decisions and trade-offs. Sometimes it will be necessary to say no.
The second would be much heavier investment in skills training programmes, especially high-quality training delivered at a point that allows workers to move seamlessly between jobs. As things stand, it is rare for a firm to ask for help before closure is a real and immediate threat.
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And to be clear, Scotland and the UK spend very little compared to other European countries on supporting workers at risk of redundancy or unemployed and looking for work. The sum provided by the UK government to Ineos is more than the Scottish government’s annual employability budget.
The third component would be the nurturing of institutions able to facilitate and support economic change. International survey evidence suggests that Sweden and Denmark are high amongst the countries where people are most favourably disposed to globalisation and where government, enterprises and civic society are best placed to manage the pressures of globalisation and technological change.
A strong welfare state – one the invests heavily in labour market and family support measures which complement work – underpins this readiness for economic change as does broad sectoral bargaining coverage.
During the pandemic the Scottish Conservatives called for the Scottish government to replicate Sweden’s job security councils. These are highly effective institutions providing quality advice and retraining to workers at risk of redundancy, thereby helping to both ease economic change and spread its benefits.
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Amusingly, if the Swedish model was precisely replicated in Scotland, the Scottish Government would have nothing whatsoever to do with it. For this is strictly an initiative of the Swedish trade union and employer confederations and managed through collective agreement. Such a model helps to overcome the problem of firms failing to engage until closure is imminent.
It’s natural and understandable for politicians – especially incumbent government ministers – to wish to protect jobs. This is especially true in a Scotland still coping with the legacy of the rapid deindustrialisation of decades past. With every potential mass redundancy situation over the past few years – Grangemouth, Mossmorran, Alexander Dennis, and so on – the pressure on politicians to act becomes more intense.
But, although Scotland’s economic development policy landscape is peppered with strategies, plans and ad hoc stakeholder bodies, there is little strategic about an approach which reacts to every redundancy situation by throwing money at large global firms to retain Scottish production in the short-term.
To be very clear, there will be instances when it makes sense for government to provide direct support in this regard. But Scotland’s objective should be to become a country able to embrace economic change with confidence, in a way that protects the interests of workers if not every industry and job.
Stephen Boyd is director of IPPR Scotland.
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