The post-war British approach, late 60s, early 70s on has been much more piecemeal eschewing big national projects we used to do well. The French retained the ability to use the state for good much longer than us. Or push vanity projects through, come what may, if you prefer... We did joined up thinking much better until the 1950s.
The French were the driving force behind Ariane. Britain would most likely have walked away after the failure of Europa (Blue Streak). We did after all walk away from our space programme right after achieving orbit. Still we became a much smaller participant in ESA than we had been in ELDO. Germany took our place as the other key player with the French.
The point about the Tunnel was the British Tunnel Act specifically ruled out state aid - Thatcher's government expected the private sector to stump up the whole cost. Which it pointedly failed to do. France happily took the SNCF proposal and built a national network from it using the power and purse of the state. Britain took the BR APT prototype, pushed for far too early demo, cancelled it, sold it to Fiat then bought them later as Pendelinos. We chugged along with HST.
Concorde is a brilliant pick, thanks for the perfect example! I'm going to say 95% "The French" (politically. We contributed much more fairly technically): The British really, really wanted to partner with the US who weren't interested feeling they would be giving "their" lead to the UK. We were most surprised to find the French were the most serious about SST too, and Thorneycroft (destroyer of Supersonic Harrier) found himself with only France as realistic option. The treaty was written with very heavy cancellation penalties. Roy Jenkins tried to cancel it with TSR2 in 64. He went to France to tell them. The French responded by breaking diplomatic contact[1]. :)
Actually, scrub that, it wouldn't have progressed nearly as far as British project. Treasury were against, cabinet was against, but, we were trying our first attempt to get in the EU and de Gaulle wasn't keen (he felt we were too close to the Americans to be good Europeans. 2019 hindsight thinks he may have had a damn good point). Concorde was an EU/EEC bargaining chip. Yet still we tried to cancel it.
The French were the driving force behind Ariane. Britain would most likely have walked away after the failure of Europa (Blue Streak). We did after all walk away from our space programme right after achieving orbit. Still we became a much smaller participant in ESA than we had been in ELDO. Germany took our place as the other key player with the French.
The point about the Tunnel was the British Tunnel Act specifically ruled out state aid - Thatcher's government expected the private sector to stump up the whole cost. Which it pointedly failed to do. France happily took the SNCF proposal and built a national network from it using the power and purse of the state. Britain took the BR APT prototype, pushed for far too early demo, cancelled it, sold it to Fiat then bought them later as Pendelinos. We chugged along with HST.
Concorde is a brilliant pick, thanks for the perfect example! I'm going to say 95% "The French" (politically. We contributed much more fairly technically): The British really, really wanted to partner with the US who weren't interested feeling they would be giving "their" lead to the UK. We were most surprised to find the French were the most serious about SST too, and Thorneycroft (destroyer of Supersonic Harrier) found himself with only France as realistic option. The treaty was written with very heavy cancellation penalties. Roy Jenkins tried to cancel it with TSR2 in 64. He went to France to tell them. The French responded by breaking diplomatic contact[1]. :)
Actually, scrub that, it wouldn't have progressed nearly as far as British project. Treasury were against, cabinet was against, but, we were trying our first attempt to get in the EU and de Gaulle wasn't keen (he felt we were too close to the Americans to be good Europeans. 2019 hindsight thinks he may have had a damn good point). Concorde was an EU/EEC bargaining chip. Yet still we tried to cancel it.
[1] https://history.blog.gov.uk/2019/04/09/concordes-first-briti...