Prisoner of the Past: British industrial policy from Empire to Brexit

Industrial policy is among the oldest elements of British economic statecraft. Born in the cradle of empire, and grounded in the commitment to free trade and international capital mobility, British industrial policy has tended to prioritize financial services rather than the civilian manufacturing industries preferred by most other early industrializing countries. Economic weaknesses caused by this finance-centred approach to industrial policy were largely ameliorated in the nineteenth century by the burgeoning British empire, whose imperial markets gave its civilian manufacturers significant competitive advantages. In the twentieth century, however, economic decline and the fall of empire would rob Britain of the...