Was it obvious back in the day that Sinclair's plans had no future? I'd posit that in the 1980s, Britain's home computer industry looked quite vital. Granted, most of the machines were primitive (no operating system to speak of, basic I/O, little more than a microcontroller with a TV interface, a keyboard and a BASIC interpreter), though the BBC micro was actually somewhat of an exception (it was a very modular and extensible system, and perhaps the most sophisticated 6502-based platform in popular use).
I wonder if this could be interpreted as an ironic spoof of the movie 'Pirates of Silicon Valley' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_of_Silicon_Valley), the tale of the early days of the Apple-Microsoft rivalry? Ironic because Jobs and Gates were battling for control of a huge worldwide market, whereas Sinclair and Curry were, to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, engaged in a struggle for hogwash.