Still 'picking winners': The political history of UK industrial strategy

Beginning in the seventeenth century, UK governments have sought to ‘pick winners’, making them one of the pioneers of industrial strategy. Unlike most other countries, whose industrial strategies tended to promote civilian manufacturing, UK industrial strategy has focused predominately on financial services and defence manufacturing. Broadly speaking the UK’s industrial strategy has dovetailed with three periods of statecraft concerned with the rise and fall of the British empire. This chapter briefly elucidates the dominant forms of industrial strategy in each era.