It was only a year ago that the Government was basking in the glory of the City of London, which was challenging New York’s status as the world’s financial centre.

But now, as Britain’s leading banks scramble to repair their finances and the City faces big cutbacks, our reliance on a small corner of London for so much — jobs, tax revenues and the trickle-down of cash — seems to some just a little risky.

Sir John Rose, the chief executive of Rolls-Royce, has taken the opportunity to challenge the conventional wisdom that Britain should be the poster-child for the “post-industrial society”. He points to the 1 million manufacturing jobs that have been lost in ten years and calls on the Government to stop treating manufacturing as a relic of the industrial revolution.

Making things can be good business and can be done far from London and the hotspots of the South East.

It may not be realistic for Britain to regain its status as “an industrial leader” as Sir John hopes. But the worry is that after the continued shrinkage of the past few years, Britain’s industrial base may be dropping below a critical mass. If you want to buy locomotives, Britain can no longer help. You must ask Siemens of Germany or Alstom of France. The shrinking base means that our remaining engineering firms, such as Rolls-Royce must look abroad for skills. As Britain begins to replace its nuclear power stations with a new generation of plant, it is not just the designs that will be imported but a whole range of skilled professionals who are lacking in Britain.

The trouble with modern financial services is not just that they are cyclical — as we are finding at the moment — but that they are highly mobile. Unlike a widget manufacturer, a hedge fund manager can be here today and gone tomorrow.

These are fair weather businesses that can shift to greener pastures simply by renting new office space. Sir John’s concerns about the attractiveness of Britain for manufacturers would be less worrying if there were not also increasing concerns about the attractiveness of Britain for modern financial services companies.

The Government’s cackhanded attack on non-doms has alienated thousands of key individuals working in these companies and thousands of their clients. The loss of a few hundred of these will have a much bigger impact on the wider economy than thousands of manufacturing jobs.

There is also one big concern that the manufacturing and financial services sectors share — the quality and quantity of scientific and technical education in the UK.

Technology plays an increasingly important role in all the wholesale financial services in which London excels. Yet financial firms complain of an acute shortage of IT skills in London and say it is much cheaper to find the right people in New York and Paris, let alone Dublin or Bangalore.

Two decades ago, the fund management industry was dominated by Oxbridge arts graduates. Now it is a much more technical business and the maths and physics graduates who run it are often imports from New York or Paris.

We need to make it attractive for them to stay and grow more of our own. Otherwise, the risk is not that we may learn to regret being a post-industrial society but we may also become a post-financial services society.

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