Happy memories - and perspective
Nice to see Nascom being recognised as the UK's first microcomputer (I'm not sure "arguably" comes into it - if there was an earlier commercially available option with full keyboard/screen, then I don't know of it). I was a little late into the game as I started with the Nascom II.
Many years ago I designed and built a control and timing system for a car racing track using the Gemini system, which was basically a company setup by some Nascom staff when the company went into receivership (eventually bought by Lucas). The Gemini basically adopted the NAS-BUS renamed as 80-BUS and, for a while, there were compatible cards produced which would work with either Gemini or Lucas-Nascom systems. Sadly, whilst the race track was built and the system installed, the business was fundamentally flawed and now operates as a kart track. However, I still have my original Nascom II and the prototyped Gemini-based timing system, complete with the multi-tasking real time control system I designed for it.
As for the know-it-all who condemns blames the failure of Nascom on not choosing Intel, this shows an enormous amount of ignorance. At the time the Nascom was produced, the 8086/8088 family wasn't available (the Z80 was an improved 8080), and many manufacturers in both the US and the UK used other chips. Indeed the industry-standard OS at the time was CP/M and that was very much centred on the Z80 & 8080 architectures. At the time the Nascom was designed it could easily be said that it was based around what looked like an industry standard processor.
Meanwhile, many other companies used the Z80, some Motorola 68000 and yet others the MOS technology 6502, including one called Apple. Shame they came to nothing because they adopted the wrong chip for their first computer...
Of course the 8086 family only become the industry standard through marketing and the happy fact (coincidental or not) that IBM chose it for the basis of their belated entry into the business PC market thereby inadvertently setting an industry standard (in IBM's rush to jump aboard a boat that they very nearly missed, they weren't able to do what they'd done in the past and tied up designs with IBM proprietary standards - by the time they realised it, and sought to regain control - remember Micro Channel - it was too late). If it wasn't for this action by IBM the standard PC architecture might well have been based on another processor family. Indeed, in many ways, the Intel 8086 was one of the least likely choices on purely technical grounds - it was a flawed architecture, and arguable several of the alternatives at the time were better. For that matter, we may have had a different OS model - MS-DOS was little more than a CP/M look-alike for the 8086 family, and it's well known that IBM's adoption of the OS could easily have gone another way. It is not always the case that the "best" solutions win through in industry. Much also relies on luck or seemingly arbitrary decisions by people who just happen to be in the right position at the right time.
Of course there were many UK computer companies that did seek to adopt the Intel 8086 family and produce industry standard designs, and they have pretty well all disappeared as they got squashed by competition. The problem with just producing industry standard designs is that there's little room for true innovation. It becomes a commodity market, and the spoils go to those with the lowest cost base.
Finally, one few UK survivors in the computer market is ARM, the offspring of Acorn Computers, and they did innovate. For the record Acorn Computers did not adopt Intel processors, they started with the 6502.