Forty years ago, an ideological war was fought between the "wets" (believing in industrial policy) and the "drys" (believing governments had no role in "picking winners"). Margaret Thatcher's inner circle coined these terms. The drys won decisively.

The market would determine outcomes. Government handed its intervention levers to independent regulators whose parliamentary mandates hardwired them to promote competition and deliver low consumer prices. The Treasury's role became containing public expenditure. "Technology neutrality" was elevated to sacred principle. Reaction times for any change would be slowed by requiring substantial evidence bases before action.

This framework wasn't designed for technology leadership. It was designed to prevent government intervention.

Over the next forty years, perhaps four serious efforts were made to revive industrial policy. None survived. Any momentum generated was ground down by the imperfections of this legacy framework, then finished off completely with the next political swing back toward non-intervention ideology.

The 5G Case: Good People, Impossible Framework

The recently published book Graveyard of Good Intentions: Why Governments Launch Technology Strategies That Cannot Win - And the Ten Golden Rules to Fix Them documents this dynamic in painful detail through the story of UK 5G in five acts. It's particularly painful for those involved who did everything possible for the initiative to succeed.

When the strategy errors were so basic and visible at the time, it begs the question: how could this have happened?

The explanation is straightforward. The clock was ticking. 5G was gathering international momentum. An initiative had to launch. There were two paths: work within the imperfect legacy framework, or break out of it entirely.

Breaking out would have required expending enormous political capital - building the evidence base, fighting fiercely independent regulators, battling for parliamentary slots to change legislation. The path of least resistance was launching within the existing framework, knowing the constraints made success unlikely.

Challenge anyone to say they would have chosen the harder path - or braver still, pressed the kill-switch on an initiative unlikely to succeed. This same dynamic explains why today's AI Opportunity Action Plan has launched down the same constrained path where global leadership remains patently out of reach.

Why Now Is Different

Two factors have changed fundamentally.

First, the world has become far harsher. We're in an era defined by growing rivalry between the US and China, with substantial swings back toward government intervention and industrial policy globally. Success will beget success; failure will beget failure. The UK cannot afford more half-baked strategies that waste billions without delivering returns.

Second, AI itself changes the calculus. Unlike previous technology waves, AI's pervasiveness and impact on competitiveness means the cost of failure is existential, not merely embarrassing.

The UK has no choice but to learn - very quickly - how to launch successful technology interventions.

The Way Forward: Two Options

The Ten Golden Rules provide a success checklist for technology leadership initiatives. But they're not enough on their own. The huge challenge remains: breaking out of the imperfect legacy framework.

Here there are two choices.

The first is root-and-branch transformation of the entire framework. That's a 5-10 year undertaking requiring sustained political will across election cycles.

The second is narrower and faster: create a transformed framework specifically for a handful of identified technologies where the UK has genuine competitive strengths and potential for global leadership. This could be accomplished in 18 months.

This targeted approach could serve as the pilot run that provides the evidence base for broader transformation to follow. It would give very senior policymakers the levers of power they've lacked for forty years - powers to make strategic technology investments, coordinate across departments and regulators, move at market speed, and take calculated risks on emerging opportunities. Most importantly, it would break the cycle of launching strategies doomed by structural constraints.