Government documents reveal how Margaret Thatcher turned against picking winners, says Jon Agar.
In the past decade, the UK has had to relearn how to do industrial strategy, following several decades when the use of public funds to support industrial innovation was seen as tampering with the proper workings of the free market.
Industrial strategy became a no-go area in the 1980s, when prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s government transformed science policy to end government-funded near-market research and champion curiosity-driven science.
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