If you look what the 1957 defence white paper did - a government based decision which essentially doomed all UK based fighter projects to an early death. The Harrier was only strung along as an oddity and probably saved by the US interest in it,the Bucaneer was too far along the line,and the TSR2 was canceled due to bickering in the UK government and military. Aircraft like the VC10 and Trident were hampered by our government putting stupid stipulations on engines and so on. Due to that Boeing hit pay dirt with the 727. That put paid to any real indigenous plans for large airliners.
The French built the first Mirage which was partially copied off a Fairey design which was tested in France. The Kestrel(which the Harrier was meant more as a test bed for the VTOL technology) was cancelled. That was a monumental eff up - loads of countries bought the Mirage III since it was supersonic.
The French have sold the better part of 3000 Mirage fighters since then. Even the Jaguar which was around 550 aircraft was co-developed with Breguet Aviation.
The French fighter industry and aviation industry is far more healthier than the UK one which only has had one proper indigenous trainer/fighter in the last 35 years. Even our commercial aircraft industry pales in comparison with the French. The few designs which built in any number into the 80s and 90s were off shoots of 50s and 60s designs.
Airbus is essentially French led and so is Arianespace. FFS,if you look at the Europa project,the UK had some of the best rocket engine designs in Europe. After our lot decided,we don't need a space launch programme,most of those people went and worked at NASA and Arianespace.
The US had the monopoly on large commercial aircraft and commercial satellite launching. The French government were savvy enough to invest in their industry so they could challenge them - our governments were half hearted and half arsed about the whole thing. No direction - just all of the political parties bickering.
Our car industries are more of the same. Look at Eurocopter.
Sure we have Westland and my family knew their chief test pilot who did the world record attempt with the BERP rotor system,but the mindshare of companies like Eurocopter partly based on companies like Aérospatiale is hard to get over.
Decades of poor government and commercial management has left our aeronautics industry,more as a parts provider for other countries aircraft.
Yes,it makes money but still?
Look at how we even get less money out of the F35 programme than Italy does,since we gave up work share so we had greater access to the software,which the US tried to then cheat us out of.
But the issue,is the UK had the capacity to do all of this itself - we sadly don't really anymore,as all the stupid governmental decisions destroyed the aviation industry - it was death by a 1000 cuts,starting in the 1950s with blithering idiots in our government.
If our governments had invested more into our aeronautics industries from the 60s onwards we have had more high technology manufacturing in this country which is less of an issue for expensive products like aircraft and carrier rockets when it comes to labour costs.
We went from the most developed aeronautics industry in Europe the 50s(in many ways),to the French being able to build an entire Fighter line,business jets,and have the Lions share of things like commercial jets.
We cannot even build a nuclear power plant anymore without external help.
I really hope with Reaction Engines Limited,the government does continue providing funding for that. That is something which is world beating and we could build it here. I hope it is not farmed over to another country when they get the design perfected.
Like I said it's something I could argue about until the cows come home so probably don't want to go on a tangent with this.