Complacency is to blame

You can still buy the jigsaw in toy shops. It's a map of Britain, with Yorkshire collieries, ships on the Clyde, textiles in the North-West and cars in the West Midlands. It's every child's and parent's and grandparent's view of the country. Sweet, really.

Presumably, future generations will do puzzles with icons for call centres, distribution firms, superstores and sandwich makers. That is what this island has become: a service economy where nothing is manufactured on a scale to have real meaning.

Rover is the latest, and last, to go. In 1968 its market share was 40 per cent. Today, it's less than three. That is not a decline to be laid against this Government or John Towers.

The Chinese may have realised they could cherry pick what they want from an administrator in a giant car boot sale. Labour may have been naive to put all its eggs with one buyer - and details of Tony Blair's long phone call will provoke a wry smile with anyone used to trading with the Chinese. They do things at their speed, in their own way. No amount of pleading would change that.

There may be political fallout but it is not likely to be so great. Would the Tories have done it differently? No.

Factory closure is hardly a new experience. Rover's 6,000 workers just join the rest, manning checkouts, stacking shelves, taking people round industrial heritage centres.

Complacency is to blame: from governments, unrealistic unions, poor managements and us, who long ago stopped buying British.