As the UK has discovered, there is no postindustrial promised land

In the 1950s, every region of Britain had industrial clout. Then came postindustrialism, a disastrous intellectual fad that has proved to be no substitute for advanced manufacturing

Anyone puzzled by Scotland's increasing disaffection should take a look at a book called British Enterprise. Written by Alexander Howard and Ernest Newman, and published in 1952, the immediate afterglow of the festival of Britain, it consisted of short descriptions of each of more than 100 then world-beating British manufacturing companies.

It strikingly illustrates how much more geographically balanced the British economy was in those days. In common with latterday Germany, every region of 1950s Britain had plenty of industrial prowess to boast of.