I was around in the 60s and early 70s, and there were a lot more beggars on the street than there are now. Maybe there were more in the 80s, but I was in different countries then. And the solution with British industry was and is to make it productive, not subsidise it. And there have been many programmes to make industry more productive, some even funded by the EU through the Framework programmes and now Horizon2020. I saw the difference that ERDF made to Merseyside. Liverpool was the city of the Boys from the Blackstuff, and now with EU help it has many new, thriving industries. Britain has to compete at the things it is good at, not the things it is rubbish at. And the EU is there to help.

Despite Thatcherism in the intervening years, Britain is an infinitely more prosperous place than it was in 1973.