UK exceptionalism
The UK accounts for 2 per cent of global manufacturing and 2 per cent of global R&D. You’re not a science superpower if you do 2 per cent…You can’t go around claiming that in seven years’ time the UK is going to be a climate leader or leader in green tech, it just doesn’t make sense
The British economy needs to follow a policy of improvement, not a policy of chest-beating and claiming to be on the cusp of transformative breakthroughs.
David Edgerton, the historian of science and technology, quoted in The New Statesman 14-20 July 2023 page 143