British author Bill Gunston wrote a serious article some years ago on the very same subject. His conclusion, [and I recall this from a few years ago] was that without the "Buy British" bankroll of the aircraft manufacturing industry, it would have gone belly up at the time of the Comet disasters.
I can think of a number of aircraft types , for example, which were absolutely inferior compared to what was available to the US, the Century series fighters for example, but were foisted on the RAF because they were British. The point was surely made when the RAF had to fly both B29 Washington, and Sabres because there was nothing in the UK inventory to fit those tasks. Wherever you care to look at aircraft types, in whatever role, we had second best. Beverly and Hastings were light years behind turbo-prop US equivalents.
We in NZ were similarly pressured by the way! In 1967 when ANZ opted for the B737 instead of the BAC 1-11 there were questions in Parliament, but the facts were that the B737 was a far superior aircraft for NZ routes. They also bought the F27 Friendship in preference to the Herald, again because the F27 was a much friendlier proposition. From the 1960s right up until the present day, no British aircraft was ever given serious consideration by ANZ.
Bill Gunston was right!