Space is useful. It enables us to communicate, to navigate, and to track what is happening on earth. And there is now a surge of Space activity. Instead of being dominated by Government agencies getting into the detail of technology design, there are now entrepreneurs running flexible low cost projects.
The billionaires get the significance of Space – and regard their activities as some eccentric self-indulgence is to fail to grasp what they are really up to.
We can avoid getting into an argument about whether or not the Government’s plan is an industrial strategy. The Conservative Party has got rather hung up on that term.
People need a sense of hope and optimism about their prospects. And one of the best ways for the new Prime Minister to deliver that credibly is indeed to show how they will grow the innovations which will make life better.
Tomorrow marks the first anniversary of the Prime Minister’s boldest move to get us ahead in the new space race – the One Web deal.
The sector is key to the growth that will be defining the future world economy, including in areas like clean energy, robotics and artificial intelligence.
It has the freedom to make big bets on new firms and new technology, and can help regulators develop sensible rules for this vital sector.
Some are having fun with Alan Duncan’s diary revelation that Tobias wants Svetland to become a UK spaceport. They shouldn’t.
Wallace has done well to win an exceptional defence settlement, but it may not be enough to fund all the Integrated Review’s ambitions.
It’s hard to think that the right future is to be a less research-intensive country than the rest of the world, and so I hope our commitment will endure.
The best way of thinking about it isn’t to fix one’s gaze on direct subsidies, but to look wider – at our failure to turn British ideas into British prosperity.
This move will help advance the country’s technological infrastructure, as well as meaning Conservatives meet their ‘levelling up’ pledge.
Here is a Leader of the Opposition who cannot see an open goal without tapping the ball gently in the wrong direction.
No less than the ERG, the group of three sees everything through the prism of Brexit – which, let it not be forgotten, they voted to support themselves.
Our vaccination programme is proof of what can be achieved when science and industry is backed by the power of the state.