BACK in the pre-Brexit era, an ambitious public-private partnership of industry leaders and government officials set out on a precarious initiative.

Having courted the infamously indomitable shipping magnate John Fredriksen with the support of senior politicians including Boris Johnson, they escorted him through a series suitably swanky Mayfair bars on a booze-fuelled charm offensive.

It failed.

Fredriksen remained unconvinced by the well-oiled pitch and never did get round to reflagging his fleet to the UK.

Given he has more recently pronounced Britain as having “gone to hell” and sold up in a huff, it seems unlikely that he would have been paying much attention to the showcase pitches this week at London International Shipping Week.

But if he, or any of his like-minded ship-owning peers who have performed their own Brexodus to more welcoming shores, had attended this week’s events, would they have reconsidered?

The few that are left are here, in spite of, rather than because of government support for the industry seemed unconvinced, but it takes more than non-dom owners to make a modern maritime hub.

There was certainly a buzz among the near 2,000-strong guests at the glitzy gala dinner that concluded proceedings this week.

Among the platitudes and self-congratulatory speeches there was substance and dialogue from industry and government setting about the business of shipping that has sustained London in the top five bracket of global maritime hubs for another year.

For now, at least.

Because once you cut away the platitudes about how shipping is the lifeblood of our island economy, throw in a couple figures on value added input into the economy and mutter something aspirational about growth, we have to get to tangible facts of doing business.

And that requires an ecosystem.

Yes, it requires access to capital, skills, infrastructure, all those basics that every modern maritime hub relies on.

But it requires strategy. It requires an innovative mindset from an industry that is still a little bit analogue around the edges.

It requires policy that delivers where it’s needed and when it is promised, rather than gathering dust on a shelf in Westminster as it waits for the latest minister to pass through the door.

It requires industry and government work together, listen to each other, and adapt to changing expectations.

It’s no one thing — it requires a holistic, joined-up approach to make those nice vision statements a reality, not just an aspiration.

London doing well

And the good news is that London is actually doing pretty well, but there is strong, very proactive competition out there and, without strategic action, the UK risks losing ground to faster-moving maritime nations.

This week we have heard convincing arguments to suggest that the UK is reasonably good at matching smart ideas with smart money. But the UK risks becoming an “incubator economy”, where technology start-ups develop before selling or moving abroad.

Entrepreneurs in the UK face what Lady Stowell, who recently led a review on scaling startups, calls “a spaghetti of schemes” to pick through, while “drowning in an alphabet soup” of regulators.

But scapegoating the government of the day, a traditional sport among industry veterans, is also not productive.

We are still an industry where clever digital companies are failing to prove value and gain traction among traditional business models unwilling to invest in efficiency because there are still limited commercial upsides, split incentives, and the general feeling that innovation is someone else’s priority.

Talent is the backbone of maritime services and for the UK in particular there is work that is desperately needed to sustain its position.

At a basic level, the UK must modernise cadet training and funding to attract the next generation.

Post-Brexit, employee recruitment has also become more difficult, especially for shore-based technical and operational roles. Visa restrictions now limit career development opportunities for seafarers transitioning to shore roles or to develop experience via temporary assignments.

Those increasingly elusive owners who previously attracted talent to the UK are now having much less of an issue convincing shipping’s brightest and best to head for Greece, Copenhagen and Hamburg.

“Be more Singapore¨ sounds like convincing guidance in principle when government asks for direction, but the UK and many of its European peers are never going to be able to do that. They are more diverse and politically very different economies.

What we can ask for and expect, however, is practical policy reform to match the promises of government support voiced this week.

The goal should be to make the UK a more predictable, stable and attractive place to do business.

Build a credible business platform for the UK maritime sector to grow and utilise this to demonstrate that Britain is open for business as part of this Government’s Plan for Change to deliver on its core mission to grow the economy.

That may not be sufficient to convince Fredriksen to contact his estate agent and book in a call with the UK ship register, but a predictable, pragmatic and slightly boring consistency of approach will allow businesses to plan and ultimately thrive.