This is just so lovely. For of course British Steel was so valuable that we couldn’t just allow it to sink into the mire. Hugely valuable it was and is, deserves our support:
Find a credible plan for British Steel, ministers told as ‘startling’ costs soar
So what is that value? What is there within British Steel as a value that needs to be preserved?
Labour has been urged to lay out a credible plan for the future of British Steel, as the government spending watchdog warned of the “startling” costs of keeping the struggling manufacturer in business with no end in sight.
British Steel was taken into public ownership in July to protect “the future of steel production”, 15 months after the government stepped in to prevent the closure of its steelworks in Scunthorpe and the loss of 4,000 jobs.
But it is costing £1.3m a day to keep the company running, with the total estimated cost reaching as much as £1.5bn by 2028. By mid-June, the government had spent £555m paying workers’ salaries and buying raw materials, excluding the cost of external advisers.
Where is that value? We’ve spent - only so far - half a billion. Sorry, they’ve spent half a billion of our money on what they claim has value. OK. What is that value? What’s the plan here?
Don’t forget, the value here has to be monetisable for it to be an actual value. British Steel needs to start turning a profit. So, how’s it going to do that? If British Steel never will turn a profit then it doesn’t, in fact, have a value. So, what’s the plan for it to do so?
The sad reality here is that virgin steel production in the rich countries is a dying technology. We just don’t need it any more. Pretty much every steel we do want can be made from scrap in an electric arc furnace. And those few - very few - steels that cannot be won’t cover the costs of running our own blast furnace. It’s over, like hydraulic power companies and thorium lamp mantles. This is, of course, what happens with every company, every technology, eventually. It stops being worth doing so people stop doing it.
The only thing of value here is what lefties and socialists put on manly men doing manly things, buffly. And while that’s a perfectly acceptable, even sensible, kink there’s no reason why the rest of us have to pay for that. But there we are, nothing so conservative as a socialist or lefty. Nothing can ever be allowed to die off, all must be preserved.
And, you know, wouldn’t it be nice if they’d thought through what their plan was going to be before they spent the half billion? With that more - ooooh, much more - to come?
You could probably make an argument around defense/national resilience, but it's been a while since I've seen a govt with the sophistication to make it. They can't maintain a viable armed forces without the supply-chain concerns, dropping half a billion a year would need a hell of an argument in favour.
It would be cheaper to shut down British Steel and pay the workers full salaries to sit at home.
Same story as Trump's tariffs with estimates of every job "brought back" to America costing half a million dollars and more. It seems that there is no way to get rid of financially reckless politicians other than to lose a world war. Even that doesn't last long.