Stirrer Comment

MORE CHAMPAGNE FOR ROVER…LESS WHINE

09-08-2008

Confirmation that car making is to resume at Longbridge in August is a cause for celebration …but while we pop open the champagne, can we do away with that well-matured Brummie whine?

Nanjing’s MGTF model – due in the shops in September - is of course an update of an old car, and it will be a couple of years at least before new models emerge.

Even when they do, the scale of production will be considerably smaller than we have been used to in the past, and the employment potential runs at best into hundreds and not thousands of jobs.

For all that, we should be thankful that any new manufacturing posts are being created at all.

Yet instead of gratitude, some sections of the local media seem to think that the plant’s Chinese owners have some kind of debt to Birmingham. The brutal truth is that they don't owe us anything.

SAIC and Nanjing can choose to operate wherever in the world they want; we will only get the business in the long term if we can provide a skilled workforce and access to markets.

In any event, while the new posts are welcome, they are only a small part of the future story of Longbridge.

What’s really needed is the follow-on infrastructure – the hi-tech research and development facilities, the creation of a relocated Bournville college, the resuscitation of a fading suburb in the south-west of Birmingham, all previously mapped out by Birmingham Council, AWM and Northfield MP Richard Burden.

These are all far more important than the symbolic resurrection of the car plant.

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