"Declined on paper"...

Have you ever visited a former hub of manufacturing industry? Acres of devastation. And not just heavy industry. In Harlow where there was all kinds of light industry in industrial areas it's all warehouses and warehouse stores staffed by a couple of lonely assistants on the pay desk.

Much of what is currently still called manufacturing is in fact assembly work, with the parts all manufactured in other parts of the world.

Change happens. Britain is not a manufacturing country in the sense it was, andd that's not wholly a bad thing. But the way iit has been done has been in a way that maximised the harm done to the communities dependant on the industries that have gone, and largely shrugged off the need to make sure that thhere were still real and dignified jobs for the people of those communities.