To maintain its economic leadership, the UK must learn from the proactive policies of competitors like France and urgently reform its own R&D and investment schemes to better support innovative start-ups and scale-ups, says Gregor Poynton

As the UK faces up to the economic challenges we confront as a country, we should remain optimistic about the ability of the UK to thrive in an uncertain world.

Given the past decade and a half, it is easy to be pessimistic.

But the UK remains the sixth largest economy in the world. We have four of the top 10 universities in the world, more unicorns than Germany and France combined, and the largest hub for venture capital and start-up investment outside the US, built on our world-class financial and tech sectors.

But even in our areas of greatest strength, the rest of the world is not standing still. A decade ago when the UK was still in the EU the idea that France, Spain, Italy and Germany would each be attracting private capital investors, tech entrepreneurs and financiers at scale from the UK was a distant prospect.

One by one, those countries have clocked the value of what the UK has, and they’re moving fast with pragmatic action to spark innovation, pull in investment, grow scale-ups and take aim at the UK’s dominance in Europe.

Thanks to the strong and improving trading relationship that we in the UK have with the EU, their success can still be our success. But we cannot complacently allow ourselves to fall behind – the lessons of their success should be lessons for us too.

Take France. In........

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