The most most successful car companies in the world are from a country even less advantageous to auto manufacture, Japan. They had very little natural resources and about the only avdantage vs UK was a little bit bigger population.
I didn't realize the UK was known for wool production. I know it as the birthplace of the industrial revolution and the country that mined enough coal to cover the entire country to a depth of three inches.
Blaming it on unions is dumb (German car makers seem to do just fine), but if you were looking at the situation in the first half of the last century, it would be pretty reasonable to expect UK car manufacturing to be a big deal. And especially ship building. They had the world's largest navy for a long time, and they didn't do it by importing ships.
For steel you need iron ore and coal, which the UK has plenty of. It was heavily industrialized in the 19th century. It's not that different in terms of natural resources to Germany.
British cars could have remained competitive for a lot longer if labour relations had been like in Germany. Germany's organized labour is/was famously mild compared to the feral British unions that were run by open Marxists and did things like topple governments.
Germany's economy is currently collapsing because they can't import cheap energy. I don't think unions matter much, except to democracy.
The british isle is also unlikely to become a steel production hub unless it both grows massively and reorganizes its labor around efficiency rather than profit.
That's true today but is a very recent thing. The trends I'm talking about were mostly in the 20th century when Germany had cheap energy.
Britain was a steel production hub once, making 40% of the world's output. But I agree it's unlikely to become one again. For one many of its coal mines were shut down and flooded or otherwise destroyed.
It sounds like your hypothesis is that if only the poor people knew their place, and remained serfs, then UK manufacturing would be the best in the World...
I'm sure you're insisting on working for below minimum wage with no holidays and no sick pay, just to show that unions are worthless.
