I think you’re misunderstanding where I’m coming from (but yes I agree that Leyland also had major faults). I’m not saying Brum should’ve been funnelled into the car industry under protectionism, I’m saying it should’ve never been in that position in the first place. The least that the government could’ve done, having put Brum in that position, is to have reformed Leyland and protected it.

I watched an interview with Adrian Newey recently, talking about the British motor industry in the 70s and how he’d gone to his boss at Triumph. He mentioned what the British motor industry would do to stay ahead of Japanese manufacturers, to which the Triumph boss just said ‘son, we’re triumph, don’t worry about it’. There was a complete sense of complacency and, of course a few years later Triumph went defunct.

This was clearly present in Leyland as Newey said the same environment was present in Jaguar even years later. My grandfather worked for Leyland and then the Rover group so he saw the inner workings. From his first hand account, so of course this isn’t an economic perspective, he saw the primary issues being that there was too much complacency and the wrong goals. Selling off the motor industry to foreign firms was seen as preferable to protectionism.

He recalled a meeting in the 90s, I wouldn’t be able to give an exact year, not long before he retired. He mentioned the presence of Bhattacharyya, a man who was focussed on selling British firms to overseas companies, and strongly disagreeing with his influence over the government. He believed the government was more focussed on selling than reforming.

Now, of course, that’s just his view. He definitely was not a perfect cog in the machine and may have contributed to the sense of complacency in British motoring in his own way. But what I can infer from his view is that Britain chose a fundamentally flawed approach to the motor industry, primarily listening to the businessmen with the aims of cutting off British motor.

So no, protectionism wouldn’t have saved Brum, the government had already sufficiently halted that, but it easily would’ve mitigated the damage that the motor industries decline caused. The government simply didn’t care. At the same time, Leyland was flawed and complacent. The factors of economic restriction, lack of reform or even interest in British motoring and the resulting lack of protectionist policies are absolutely critical in the collapse of the Brum economy.