Something has been nagging at me.

I have been inherently lazy in my discussions about State Aid and Brexit.

The gist of my tweets - and those of many others - is "ha ha, you think this UK Government could pick a tech winner? Dream on!"

Now that may not be wrong. But it is not enough. It is not adequate.

I'd like to unpack this a little, and I'd like my followers to help unpack it too.

Let us assume for a moment that the UK wanting greater control on State Aid is not for malevolent purposes, and the idea that the UK could be a world leader in AI or biotech or other tech sectors is a noble aim, and that *government intervention* could help towards this end.

The leads to two logical further questions:
Are there cases in other countries where state backing of tech industries worked, and these could serve as a model for the UK?
If so, is there anything in EU State Aid rules that would stop the UK answering question

I don't think either the USA or China help us answer question - the UK does not have the USA's military-industrial complex that was at the root of a lot of what Silicon Valley did at the start. And the UK will not emulate China's surveillance-authoritarian-capitalist model.

So what else is there? Are there examples of medium sized countries that have - through state intervention - done something right in this regard? South Korea (but Samsung, Daewoo, LG...?), Taiwan, perhaps the Nordics? Canada?

And then to - the UK has traditionally been much more reluctant to use State Aid than plenty of other EU countries, where it is mostly used to help declining industries to restructure - and the EU's State Aid regime has been flexible enough to allow this.

Two semi-tangents:
@williamnhutton has a proposal that the UK Government could invest in ARM but I've not seen any more about that https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/09/this-tech-giant-up-for-sale-is-a-homegrown-miracle-it-must-be-saved-for-britain

The Times reports how the tech sector in the UK is in good health *anyway* https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tech-firms-blaze-trail-with-huge-jobs-drive-jbr507j07

Anyway, so those are the things I would like to unpack, and indeed those are the questions people like @peston ought to be unpacking too, rather than regurgitating the government's plans: https://www.itv.com/news/2020-09-07/the-reason-why-boris-johnson-is-jeopardising-an-eu-free-trade-deal

I'd value thoughts from @DavidHenigUK @SamuelMarcLowe @GeorgePeretzQC about issues raised in this thread - is there some "Would what they're trying to do even work?" piece somewhere that can explain this in a way that doesn't just assume Number 10 is lazy or malevolent?

/ends