Your leader on the choice facing the Bank of England and the government over the strength of the pound brought tears of nostalgia to my eyes. How we longed for a strong pound, it underpinned our national pride. 

My childhood was punctuated by Stirling crises. In later life, as I have explored the history of British manufacturing, I realise just how wrong this was. The coming of North Sea oil brought strength to Stirling but destroyed manufacturing companies by making exports far too expensive and sucked in cheap imports making home sales so much harder. 

Will Hutton makes the chilling point that ‘Our international accounts have been in the red continually since 1984, paid for by selling off land, companies and property to foreigners, so we now dangerously owe the rest of the world increasingly more than it owes us.’

I am an unashamed manufacturing groupy. Gambling on the strength of our financial sector has not brought wide spread prosperity, but a revival of manufacturing embracing new technologies just could.