ABSTRACT
By the early 1990s these trends appeared to have run their course, or at least been modified by the recurrent failure of initiatives regardless of their political provenance. Repeated disappointment of expectations about the behaviour of the economy had forced a deeper scrutiny of the complex of causes underlying Britain’s long relative economic decline and descent to the bottom of the major industrial league. While the search for scapegoats, whether in management, the City, the trade union movement or government, was never likely to disappear entirely as a national sport, there were signs of an emergence of some consensus about the role that government should play in industrial success, beyond the simple provision of a framework. If it was accepted that industrialists must ultimately solve the problems of industry, it was now also understood that politics and the political process played a role in industrial success.
