Green energy like the world’s largest offshore windfarms which are in the UK? Or the SMRs Rolls-Royce are developing?

Chips like those designed by Arm that can be found in almost everything these days?

AI like DeepMind?

I might've misspoken, I didn't mean to imply the UK didn't contribute significantly to these fields, it's that they didn't manage to establish themselves as major players.

I assure you I've heard these sentiments from real Brits.

While I'm not going to question the contributions of UK people and companies to these fields, but with the exception of RR, none of these companies are actually still in the hands of Britons, DeepMind is Google, ARM has been brought out by SoftBank (and Imagination that used to do the GPUs for the iPhone has been kind of sidelined).

The UK is not percieved as a mover and shaker in the rocketry industry like the USA is with SpaceX and the like, and not even to the extent other players like Russia/China are.

Sota AI is made today by US and Chinese firms, while the UK might have an extensively built out green infrastructure, it's made out of foreign-made equipment, no UK company makes EVs like the way Tesla or VW does etc.

Well, there's something to be said about the inability to capitalize long term.

Britain has managed to be at the forefront of all those revolutionary technologies, but when the real break out happens somehow the Americans swoop in and buy the winners. That's shaky ground for future ingenuity.

ARM seems to have been very important to Cambridge at large, but it's not Silicon Valley. I can sort of understand why politicians would look back at things and ponder what could have been done differently.