British Steel taken into public ownership to protect 'vital' UK supply

It's probably not a bad idea. Steel is one of the things that an industrialized country needs to produce to protect its own sovereignty. Letting it shut down and just hope you'll always be able to import enough steel from other countries is a bad long-term strategy. You'd be left unable to fend for yourself.

This reminded me of an article in The Economist published last year, April 2025:

"Zombie politics: how Dead Man dominates British politics"[1]

Two prescient paragraphs related to today's news:

    If British politicians worship voters who are no longer among the living, it is natural that they do the same to a version of the British economy that has long departed. “There are people in this country who love to talk down our manufacturing,” said Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, while speaking in Jaguar Land Rover’s (JLR) factory in Birmingham. During the 1970s, one in four people worked in manufacturing, like Sir Keir’s dad, who died in 2018. Now fewer than one in ten do.

    Manufacturing, a small part of the economy, plays a big role in politics everywhere. Britain is no exception. A speech at a JLR plant has become a rite of passage for any leading politician in recent years. Dead Man’s old job comes first for Britain’s politicos. The lives of workers in Britain’s services economy come second. True, manufacturing’s weak performance after the financial crisis is one reason for Britain’s woeful productivity growth. Yet politicians cling on to a primitive vision of it. “He made things with his hands,” said Sir Keir of his father. That modern manufacturing requires oodles of educated workers is ignored. Living graduates play little role in political discourse beyond politicians moaning that there are too many of them. After all, Dead Man did not attend university. Why should his grandchildren bother?

Interesting how they haven't repeated in this article earlier claims that the Chinese purchase of the steelworks was a strategic move to slowly destroy the blast furnaces by letting them cool under pretext of low demand.

The government is forced to sell steel at a loss, because all the buyers for whom this is a such a vital supply would otherwise buy cheaper imported steel, every single one of them.

And ultimately all the ore and coke used to make the steel are imported anyway.

What, again?

(British Steel's predecessor was itself a nationalisation effort in the 60s.)

The 2 remaining blast furnaces need about 500m to 750m GBP spending on them within the next 2-5 years or they are just scrap themselves. UK Gov has ditched plans to fully fund the armed forces (would have meant a lot of new warships etc), which would have provided orders for virgin steel from such furnaces. It's hard to see how this has a happy and sustainable ending.

I assume, ultimately western nations will have to adopt what already exists for agricultural goods for production as well. I am afraid it will end as a per-worker subsidy analog to per-area-of-land for lack of a better metric but in the end, that is what will be necessary if one wants to keep any industrial capabilities.

one of the most hilarious examples of how the current wh admins false protectionism, in my mind, is the crucible steel bankruptcy in jan/feb 2025.

its a technological tragedy because it was the only facility im aware of globally that could actually manufacture steel based carbide alternatives at commercial volumes. idk if the relevant equipment is being operated by anyone post bankruptcy. powder steel equipment is a bit less destroyed when turned off, but i think the key blocker is that heat cycling a 3k centigrade furnace will age the material and cause cracking thatmakes it hard to resume the powederization flows

One more tiny piece of the global system of international order falling apart.

There was a time when people would have felt safe enough to rely on the multiplicity of strongly allied nations with steel production capability. Now that is not considered safe. Now steel production has to be protected because nations that were previously considered reliable strategic partners no longer are behaving that way.

It will happen slowly but piece by piece things will move and we will all pay a cost for it.

Pretty sure there's more than enough in Australia.

it makes strategic sense to retain the full verticaly integrated industrial capacity to make anything. but financialy , Britain has zero chance of bieng competitive on the open market

One can argue whether, in abstract, this was a good idea.

Back in the real world - any government or large org can do a genuinely good thing so badly that it would have been better if they'd done nothing at all.

And it's been many a decade since the British gov't had much of a reputation for competence.

Perfect! Now do the same for the banking and financial sector, the chemistry industry, big pharma, energy, water

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Tangent: disturbing to see the BBC thinking they're going to get far by paywalling quasi-randomly in North America. At least right now it's trivial to ignore.

> In March, the National Audit Office released a report noting that the Scunthorpe steelworks was costing the government about £1.3m a day.

No, BBC, the government doesn't have money. It costs the net taxpayer that much a day.