The UK has also made political choices that favour a low-skill-low-wage economy, whch many of its European neighbours have avoided.
The healthy trade union movements and company legal/financial infrastructures favouring employee participation in most north-west European countries, for example, raise labour costs and therefor push companies to automate, creating long-term productivity gains and high skill requirements.
Their better balanced economies - less dependent on services - also create more high-skill-high-wage jobs, while the UK creates a few such jobs in the City of London - but lots in low-skill-low-pay areas like hospitality.
The mistakes of Thatcherism compounded by the Blair/Brown governments' failure to correct them, still haunt the UK - and they're still being actively propagated, for example in the continuing neglect of arts and media funding and education - one of the few areas in which the UK has absolutely excelled, has created enviable incomes and skill sets, and has the natural advantage on the world stage of the English language.
