>Were there arguments back then similar to this piece?

In the UK free market ideology allowed the tech industry to slip away and financial services to dominate our economy. It's hard to see us doing anything else when we were relying on security guarantees from the US (which suited the US at the time).

I don't think this has to do with a free market at all, I think it's because the legal instruments that allow healthy venture capital are much more difficult in the UK than in the US.