Stephen byers, Britain's trade and industry secretary, waxed positively lyrical this week when he announced £530m ($835m) of launch aid to bae Systems, Britain's aerospace giant, for its share in the planned new Airbus A3XX su-perjumbo. This was not the Old Labour policy of intervening to prop up failing industries, he declared; rather, it was about backing Europe's technological future and "supporting innovation and enterprise and improving productivity." He boasted that it was only thanks to New Labour's sound fiscal policies that it could afford such imaginative investments in the "21st-century knowledge economy." Moreover, the government was not in the business of taking a punt: previous dollops of launch aid had been repaid with interest, so that even the taxpayer would come out ahead.
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