The UK bet its future on being open to trade generations ago, and this has intensified as the UK's economy has been engineered into a focus on services rather than manufacturing; so when supply chains are disrupted prices rise & supplies are constrained.
The US/Israeli attack(s) on Iran are now having a wide range of disruptive effects as we know, but the latest to be identified as a potential problem is medicines.... that might be pretty serious!
@ChrisMayLA6 Without causing arguments....
My memory of this is that it wasn't just an economic push toward less manufacturing. It was also a green push, away from our previous 'Dirty Old Man of Europe' gig.
Whether any of it was correct is kind of moot now.
Our politics runs on short term-ist philosophies. Expect a short term, not thought through, ultimately wrong 'solution'.
Hmmm.... I'm going to say the shift away from manufacturing preceded the green push, but it may well have latterly played a role?
Why do I remember everyone wearing CND badges long before Thatcher and Reagan then?
I think you're conflating two political moves; my parents took me (aged two) on an Aldermaston march so fo course you're right that precedes much de-industrialisation, but CND was not arguing for a the diminution of dirty industries it was focussed on nuclear weapons (and by extension nuclear power)... the green agenda around emissions is of a later vintage - after all Rachel Carson only wrote Silent Spring in 1962....
@ChrisMayLA6 I completely understand what you are saying, and agree with you.
I'm not a well educated man, AND my understanding is that the CND badge said GREEN (what we call green now). I'm fairly sure they were explicit in saving the planet. :))
I mean seriously, most of that movement are in the green party now. Green party nuclear policy is almost certainly legacy CND.
I'm not disagreeing with that at all.
I just think both sides are responsible for manufacturing decline.
@ChrisMayLA6 I do want to add that manufacturing literally anything is dirty, often wasteful, certainly environmentally damaging.
I don't think a decline in manufacturing is a bad thing at all. I think the exporting of the associated environmental and ecological mess is the problem these days.
I don't want more choice. I just want nicer things. - Edina Monsoon
Emeritus Prof Christopher May
Dar