Robert Peston

the isomorphic or the ineffable IP flows from university research, probably not that much given the more recent track record of silver and cannabis.

But there is a world, it seems to me, in which the state ought to be hanging on to just a share of some of these businesses.

There's another argument which I'm sort of interested in.

I'm interested in it, I suppose, from a slightly different perspective from how it was put forward by, you know, the Nobel Prize winning economist Krugman.

I don't know if you saw his... He stirred up a bit of controversy by not...

In a sense, refuting the Draghi case, that one of the reasons our productivity, certainly in the UK and for most of the EU, not quite all of the EU, but most of the EU, has simply not grown in the way that it should have done, we would have wanted it to do since the financial crisis.

Right.

So, I mean, productivity flatlining since then, living standards flatlining since then.

But he made this very interesting point that actually living standards between Europe and the US are not as different as people often allege.

And part of the reason for that is...

is, of course, the success of businesses like Meta and Alphabet and what they have done in essentially supplying services at cheaper and cheaper prices to European consumers

is they have, in effect, increased the living standards of European consumers without all the sort of, you know, the research and the creation of these world-leading companies.

So, in a sense, you know, I mean, it's sort of part of the vassal state problem that, you know,

You know, this is not the way he put it, but it's the way I'm now thinking about it.

If you're a European citizen, you think, well, you know, I'm doing all right.

Why do I have to worry about, you know, essentially changing the way we tax and regulate?

Yeah.

You know, it's perfectly all right buying American services.

I am a great optimist about the UK and the reason for that is

is we have had plenty of opportunity over the last 20 years to destroy our knowledge base and our universities, and they are thriving, right?