Behold my works and despair
Years late but it is here, the UK now has a semi conductor strategy. The government will offer computer chip companies “up to” £1 billion over a decade to boost the sector in the UK.
Let’s put that in context, the USA is offering $52 billion and the EU €43 billion, the UK might sometime before 2033 get round to putting “up to” £1 billion in the pot.
Doubtless the skies over London are already dark as air traffic control struggles to cope with the fleets of corporate jets flocking to the UK to get a part of the action.
Well maybe not and maybe this is actually a sensible plan.
The ship has sailed the UK is no longer, if it ever was, a serious semiconductor maker. The government let it slip through its hands just like car manufacturing and battery production, there is no point in throwing good money after bad.
The UK is a small, badly run and managed, weak, poor and an insignificant player. Trying to keep up with the big boys is too hard and too expensive.
To compete in these new technologies requires weight, heft, cooperation, planning, investment and above all scale.
The kind of scale that we had in the EU. Now the UK has left it has to face reality, it is a no longer playing with the big boys.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.