Can Britain recreate a microchip industry worth its salt?

UK governments let processor manufacturing drift overseas for years. Now Covid and war have shown how vital homegrown capability is, the country is scrambling to catch up. But so is everyone else

For a short time in the late 1990s, passengers stepping off the train at Newcastle station were greeted with a bold slogan: Fish Into Chips - From Mackerel Economy To Micro Technology. Invest In North Tyneside - Siemens Did."

As globalisation marched ever onwards after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this painfully British pun spoke of a swagger on the world stage. It referred to a vast 1.1bn microchip factory that the German industrial giant had just opened in the Wallsend area of the city, in a deal greased by taxpayer funding and personally brokered by John Major.