ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a brief outline of the neoliberal strategy and focuses on neoliberal policies for the electronics industry and for the wider economy. A central component of Britain’s relative industrial decline has been its poor record of technological innovation. Cutting the Support for Innovation budget was justified on the grounds that corporate profitability had improved, and therefore firms should carry more of the costs of innovation. Whatever their differences, all political parties seem to agree that the electronics revolution is a historic opportunity for Britain to reverse decades of relative industrial decline, provided that a comparative advantage can be created in the supply and use of electronics technology. By and large the neoliberal emphasis has been upon indirect rather than direct forms of industrial intervention, one index of which is that the DH budget was cut by some 65 per cent between 1979 and 1987.
