London Briefing: Dyson is a British manufacturer of high-specification washing machines and vacuum cleaners that has received many plaudits for its innovative designs and has even been rewarded by a visit from the queen to one of its factories.
Hence, huge publicity and an angry response from the trade unions have followed its recent announcement that it will soon cease all production in the UK and that it is moving, lock stock and barrel, to the Far East.
Whenever a high-profile manufacturing company announces that it is quitting Britain, the response is the same.
First, there is public hand wringing over the loss of our manufacturing base. There are those who believe that no modern economy can survive or prosper without a decent sized manufacturing sector. Economies cannot survive on services alone is the argument. This is simply nonsense.
Over the past half century, the UK has shrunk its manufacturing base from one that used to comprise 50 per cent of the economy to one that accounts for less than 20 per cent of total output. Nevertheless, we still have full employment and one of the fastest-growing economies in the EU.
Next, there are the understandable concerns over jobs. For the individuals concerned it is an undoubted tragedy, particularly when there is no obvious source of alternative employment near where they live. But my comment about the current level of unemployment suggests that it is less of a problem for the country as a whole. The economy has proved flexible enough, over time, to provide alternative jobs in non-manufacturing sectors.
From a macro perspective, the expansion of world trade brings massive net benefits but an inevitable consequence of that growth is shifts in patterns of production. The individual who becomes unemployed as part of this process cannot be consoled by the fact that, ultimately, the Chinese factory that has "taken" his job will also provide demand for Western-produced goods (probably services).
Our welfare systems exist to take some of the pain away. British parents look at the disappearance of the manufacturing base and worry about what jobs will be around for their children.
Each generation has asked the same question and the answer is always the same. Look back and realise that our parents would simply not recognise many of the jobs that exist in a modern economy. We have no idea about the structure of future employment. Stay flexible and there will be plenty of jobs.
Is it not a good thing that our children are not destined for the assembly line? Since the industrial revolution, economies have changed structure. One of the clearest examples of this was the switch - still ongoing in many countries - away from agricultural employment.
Thirty years ago, many people in the UK worried about the manufacturing threat posed by Hong Kong. Today, Hong Kong manufactures virtually nothing. It is now an almost entirely service-based economy.
Even a nodding acquaintance with economic history will teach us that the one constant is change. The key variable is the way in which we respond to that change. Those that resist it are usually run over by it and, today, are called Germany and Japan.
Their attachment to manufacturing served them well in the post-war era but they simply held on to it for too long. Those that embrace change end up looking like a modern capitalist economy.
How we handle structural economic change determines whether or not we are destined to be buried by it. The reason the OECD, the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and every private- sector economist berates Germany and other European economies is because of a failure to undertake structural reform.
If these economies were not so structurally rigid - unwilling and unable to embrace change - they would not be in the position they are now in. The need for structural reform is such a tired refrain that it verges on cliché but is no less true for being that.
The trend for manufacturing to move away from the older economies is nothing new. The US has spent much of the past 20 years worried about the movement of production facilities to Mexico.
But Mexico is now fretting about the competitive threat posed by the Asian economies. If there is anything new about recent developments it is, I suspect, something to do with the speed with which these things happen. My hunch is that the long-established trends whereby manufacturing shifts to the lowest cost base have suddenly accelerated.
