Chancellor Sunak’s Budget announcement that the UK no longer requires any formal ‘industrial strategy’ mandates an imminent name change at the relevant Government Department, BEIS. The current initials stand for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy.
Excising the last two initials from BEIS presents a significant naming dilemma. It can’t just be BE. Because it would always extend to, ‘or not to BE’.
Should the department be known as the DBE? But that would simply confuse it with those distinguished women promoted to be Dames of the British Empire.
So why not make it the Business and Energy Department? At least its initials would make perennial jokes about falling asleep on the job thoroughly apposite.
