It is rumoured the government decided to renegotiate the Scunthorpe deal they inherited to close the blast furnaces and subsidise an electric arc furnace to make recycled steel. It would clearly be better to keep the blast furnaces. Instead we read they may lose everything as the Chinese owners have rejected their revised deal as inadequate.
The UK needs basic steel making, and the nearby rolling mill. The PM recently initiated the construction of a new naval submarine, but we hear we will need to import French steel to build it. In 1940 we did not have that opportunity when we needed plenty of steel to defend ourselves.
The main reason we are losing our steel industry is the crippling price of energy here. Start getting more of our own gas out and we could build high energy using industries on that supply.
April 8, 2025
Good morning.
Sir John. Ideologues do not do joined up thinking. But today’s EU does. You see, before it became the EU it was known as the, European Coal and Steel Industry. Why coal and steel ? Because that is what you need to make weapons and, the ECSC wanted to control the means by which this can be done.
Today we have people who believe in the EU and yet, fail to understand its history especially with regards to defence. Or maybe they do and this is just part of the plan for further interdependancy ?
April 8, 2025
Same old story. The EU maintains its steel making capabilities in as much as Macron nationalised the blast furnaces in France because theyveete deemed strategic industries.
We of course being world leaders in a race no one else is running in continue on the path to destruction.
2TK yesterday made absolutely no sense exemption gas guzzling vehicles from quotas whilst hammering the general public
That alone proves the scam that net zero really is
We ate ruled by idiots and the Mauritian government wants more cash incentive to take the Chagos islands. When will it all end.l
April 8, 2025
100% Agree.
Perhaps our kind host would for once, consider ‘nationalising’ an industry, or at least one company?
Sir J, has pointed out why our blast furnaces are uneconomic, and that without them we cannot make the quality of steel needed for our defence requirements. Two reasons entirely in the hands of the government. I suggest reviewing the Rolls Royce aero engine rescue, we have done it and can do it, IF we want to keep nationally essential manufacturing capability.
That this furnace is owned by the PRC is another government failing, why would the PRC wish to support our defence needs.
Is that enough explained ‘joined up thinking’ for even this government to understand?
April 9, 2025
What really rescued Rolls Royce was securing a very large export deal for RB211s to be used as gas compressors on the pipelines from Tyumen, Siberia. That gave confidence to bankers and shareholders that the company had a viable future and no longer needed the protectionism of Rolls Royce 1971 Ltd.
April 8, 2025
Yes. The deliberate destruction of our heavy manufacturing is just an updated version of the coal (ie energy) and steel agreement, later increased to include the other “essential,” agriculture.
We are steadily being made completely dependent on foreign suppliers for all three.
The Establishment has decided that these islands no longer need defending, which is why the borders have been left wide open.
April 8, 2025
@Mark B
Our close neighbours France, Belgium, Sweden, Germany and Spain all get to supply high quality steel to the UK at the UK’s Taxpayers expense, repeat ‘UK’s Taxpayers expense’.
Which says it all about a Government and Parliament fighting its people
April 8, 2025
Milibrains monstrosities generating an all time low of 0.5gw or 1.42%. Lunatics in charge.
April 8, 2025
EU / Brexit / Pro Renewables / Anti Renewables all a distraction, in big picture, over having an overall, clear, robust, ambitious, concrete plan for energy supply.
Human nature just loves arguing, blaming others and forming factions instead of just getting on it with it and sorting problem overall as best as one can!
I’m for beautiful, wonderful Britain – that is my faction / argument / goal!
April 8, 2025
Exactly, net zero is economic, industrial suicide and for our defence systems too. But Kemi still backs it!
Sir Simon Clarke, History Oxon, trying to rebuild the Tories on Patrick Christys last night. Blaming it all on their “mistakes” on immigration levels. But Simon dear they were not “mistakes” it was a deliberate policy of serial lying to the electorate and intentionally doing the complete reverse in office.
Other mistakes were the botched Brexit, net zero, the vast tax increases, the net harm Covid lockdowns, the net harm Covid Vaccines, the lies about Covid Origins, Cameron, Osborne, May, Sunak, Hunt, the Tory attacks on non Doms, the war on landlords, the self employed and motorists, the vast increases in state debt (nearly all of it wasted).
But the main mistake was destruction of any trust in anything the Tories ever promise again – how will you get this back Sir Simon?
April 8, 2025
Plus all the market rigging in education, housing, energy, banking, transport… and all the soft loans for mainly worthless degrees!
April 8, 2025
++++ Exactly. Managed decline is not a ‘mistake’.
April 8, 2025
@Lifelogic +1 All achieved by the political terrorism of Diktats and Laws our competitor nations do not apply or feel the need for.
As for the faux Tories the ones doing the shadowing that were part of the collective responsibility for creating all the Marxist/Socialist havoc we all no endure – I hope they have no chance no following to the cancel everyone and start over. I am not a fan of Reform, but no one can deny the UK needs reforming – they become the only choice because they are ‘not’ the Uni-party. A root and branch clear out of the whole of Parliament is required because they are still fighting, still refusing, and not serving
April 8, 2025
By slappi g tariffs on Britain, Trump has given Starmer with the prefect excuse to ditch Net Zero fiasco says the sensible Matt Ridley today in the Mail. But doubtless he will be too dim to take it.
Also a good excuse to reverse all of Reeves let’s kill all growth budget!
April 8, 2025
Matt Ridley is spot on as usual.
April 8, 2025
Well the EU asking Trump for a zero tariffs i.e free trade deal!
Ironic if NI the only part of the U.K. to have a free trade deal with the USA.
Starmer better get on his knees again. The USA does not owe the world a living – neither does Britain!
April 8, 2025
@ Lifelogic,
Elon Musk in my view is the capitalist with the best overview regarding the balance (not necessarily equal at all between) needed between Green Tech and Fossil Fuels. The world is inevitably going greener tech (it doesn’t make sense to drive a noisy vehicle in London that pumps fumes into the air). It’s a bit like the West has said no to smoking in bars etc (unlike poor parts of India where you can smoke still in a cinema). Fossil fuel tech is seen as unsophisticated not just bad for you and environment. Whether you think this is right or not doesn’t matter. Emotion is just as important as logic in business. At least from the POV of advertising/branding which is my field. And there are HUGE bucket loads of money to be made from Green Tech and related Tech such as Quantum Tech and other strange tech emerging. We need to be leaders in all this for sake of economy.
April 8, 2025
And the Tech is rapidly improving year on year. Look at how a mobile phone was as big as a fridge 30 odd years ago .. Something like that.
April 9, 2025
The first cell phone in 1973 was like a brick, not a fridge
April 8, 2025
Also, huge thing Trump doesn’t get regarding globalisation is that in sophisticated tech like aeroplanes, so many experts are needed to build that plane and make it good value for money. Boeing imports 60% of its parts from abroad. That’s because others are experts at one particular part of the plane. That’s all they do. And no-one can compete with them (within reason). And so globalisation, from POV of TECH at least (that’s my strength – I worked in that for quite a few years – as well as advertising and branding) is very intricate and complicated and why you need people from different countries to participate in. To make the shift to just home-produced 100% is enormous and would take years just for one company alone to achieve (whilst losing loads of money – capitalism just doesn’t work like that). This is why Elon Musk is so strongly supportive of free trade. He’s a TECHY who understands the complexity of this. President Trump doesn’t. He has an overly Christmas-Monopoly way of looking at all this (although tariffs can work in certain cases but modernly and highly focused on something particular, not mass, crude tariffs against the world like it’s a Star Wars film or something ..).
The EU know this which is why the might bazooka Trump with its A-C I.
April 8, 2025
I find it strategically inept that any UK government should allow our steel industry to fall into the hands of a foreign owner from a country that falls short only slightly of being described as an enemy. Those in the current so called government, who would welcome a trojan horse in the form of a gigantic chinese embassy in our midst, I see as enemies of the state.
That we need a basic raw steel producer, be they nationalised or a UK private company is a given. Let the present owners drop out of the game without further government financial encouragement. Hand it FOC to such as Rolls Royce who need raw steel. Allow it the energy it needs at a quarter current costs from Red Ed’s cheapest green energy on the planet, so placing reality where his mouth is.
However with the current bunch of luddites in charge at Westminster, I see no future for a thriving industrial UK, never mind the steel industry. Yesterdays answers for the future of the UK car industry confirm it.
April 8, 2025
Scunthorpe got its Chinese owner in March 2020 following discussions started in November 2019.
April 8, 2025
I fully agree. The ‘British’ label is often spreading the truth very thinly.
The obsession of everything being for sale to whoever wants to bid is not taking care of the nations welfare and security.
There are calls for the Government to nationalise the steel industry, but given those in power now that means it will be run by Marxist Unions!!
What a mess we are in for trusting those elected to take care of our past, present and future.
April 8, 2025
Indeed Starmer saying they were committed to supporting the car industry. Sure mate by smashing it over the head with a sledge hammer I assume. Supporting its death more like it.
April 8, 2025
@agricola +1, if only!
April 8, 2025
It’s very hard to see a way out of this mess AG and I suspect that things will have to get very much worse before our ‘Leaders’ will bite the neccessary bullets (or even consider doing so). The essentials of life are that we need food, water and shelter, with defense following closely behind. These are the most basic of priorites and it might seem obvious to state them because far too many just take tham for granted.
However, I am old enough to remember my mother handing over her ration book in Sainsburys, when both food and money were in short supply. More recently, I remember the three day week and going into London shops lite by Tilley lamps because of blackouts. We take a great deal for granted but live in a fragile world. We should take a leaf from Trumps book in one respect. We may not make Britain Great again but we should certainly be putting our own needs first. We should be making very sure that we can feed and warm ourselves and pay our way in the world. Self sufficiency in food and energy should be our key priorities and they are clearly not at the moment.
“Cometh the hour, cometh the man”. Watching Starmer yesterday, frankly I didn’t see that man. I saw someone trying to pick his way through the wreckage caused by his own (and previous governments) industrial energy policies (or lack of them) and not fully understanding that the world has changed, perhaps for good.
April 8, 2025
It’s just a little bit too late now to say ‘save our steel industry’. Successive goverments have happily watched it disappear with their destructive policies. Sir John, you say that the main reason we are losing our steel industry is the crippling price of energy here so why didn’t the last Conservative government repeal Ed Miliband’s ludicrous Climate Change Act 2008? Why did the last Conservative government so enthusiastically embrace ‘climate change’ as fact when it clearly wasn’t then, and it clearly isn’t now.?
At one time British steel was the best in the world. With all Starmer’s current warmongering, how on earth are we going to be able to defend ourselves with an inferior product? There is one thing I do know right now and that is that the last government didn’t care about Britain’s prospects for the future and the current one certainly doesn’t.
How badly are we being served right now in every way? I can’t even vote in the forthcoming local elections because I am in one of those areas in which it would be deemed a ‘waste of taxpayers’ money to hold local elections when the boundaries are changing’. Well, we have no idea when those boundaries are changing, and what government of the last thirty years has ever cared about wasting taxpayers’ money? Our politicians have turned it into an art form. Indeed, it is their raison d’etre. My vote is very precious to me and to be denied it for such a flimsy reason (especially when we all know the real reason) is a complete letdown.
April 8, 2025
The gold market is in the throes of one of it’s regular pullbacks, after hitting several new all time highs this year. The current dip in gold prices is attributed to short-term technical factors such as position liquidation by weak hands, due to the equity market sell-off. Nothing in the markets goes up in straight lines; “corrections” in price are part of investing. This near-historic stock market sell off will likely come to a capitulation climax sometime this week
Central banks remain keen buyers of bullion – China’s central bank has purchased 13 tonnes of gold so far this year, bringing total reserves to 2,292 tonnes. Last week Poland’s central bank bought another 16 tonnes of gold – which increases it’s YTD net purchases to 49 tonnes.
The Treasury should take advantage of the current pullback to buy a few tons. Goldman Sachs, the American investment bank, said yesterday that the bullish case for gold remains as strong as ever and the recent decline in gold prices may offer investors a good entry point.
Goldman also noted that gold and other precious metals were exempted from Trump’s tariffs – as was Russia – and they do not expect the Trump administration to tariff it in the future. Of course, nobody knows what Trump might do next.
April 8, 2025
The Climate Change Act, Net Zero and the like are the work of Putin’s useful idiots. That group includes most MPs, much of the blob and an array of NGOs that have been pushing the man made climate change propaganda for over thirty years. To that threat must be added the POTUS, who keeps reminding us that the USA has unsustainable trade and fiscal deficits so that the USA’s word can no longer be relied on – for example as Australia discovered when a 25% tariff was recently slapped on its exports of steel and aluminum despite such a tariff being expressly excluded from the defence agreement concluded a few years ago.
The political class and the blob need to wake up and smell the coffee. Sovereign capabilities matter in the new world everyone agrees now exists post the Rose garden declaration of Trump’s tariffs. Greater energy self sufficiency and all that flows from it, such as the capacity to make steel are fundamental sovereign capabilities the UK must sustain.
April 8, 2025
If the Government needs our steel industry to defend our nation, it should take on the responsibility itself.
April 8, 2025
The main reason we are losing our steel industry is the crippling price of energy here.
And it’s all down to this Net-Zero crap the sooner people realise that all this net-zero rubbish is only making money for people in high places and keeping people in jobs who promote this zero crap, I live in Scunthorpe and have watched and worked in the steel industry we use to have 4 steel producing plants now down to one plant and one blast furnace , you can’t make perfect steel out of scrap metals you need iron ore, if the steelworks goes Scunthorpe is dead this as been the goal of all main political parties to shut down all of our main heavy industries from fishing to coal and now steel and it’s always been an excuse to blame the planets weather , wake up people this country is going down the plug hole of disaster and it needs to stop and full on reboot to make Britain Great again
April 8, 2025
+1
April 8, 2025
To repeat for anybody who missed it previously:
For 60 years up to 2008 the UK economy grew on average by 2.7% a year compound.
But during the 16 years from 2008 to 2024 the growth has averaged only 1.1% a year.
Think how much easier Rachel Reeves’ job would be now if the UK tax base had grown in line with economic growth at the rate which prevailed before Parliament decided that saving the planet was more important.
April 8, 2025
Excuses! (That’s part of reason why UK doing to badly ..)
Netherlands is greener than the UK and much stronger GDP per capita. Similar for Denmark (much more green than UK and much higher GDP per capita).
April 8, 2025
Feel free to provide your own explanation for the sharp reduction of trend growth rate since 2008.
April 8, 2025
I still don’t see what return we get for the highest taxation in history
April 9, 2025
Well they gave us the net harm Covid Vaccines and the net harm lockdowns and the vast low skilled immigration levels.
April 8, 2025
Everything this government (and the previous branch of the Uni-Party from 2010) is doing appears to be intended to de-industrialise the country, completely destroy traditional manufacturing and the millions of blue-collar jobs it supplied, and to make it defenceless.
Two-Tier is just the latest puppetician carrying out the WEF policy of destruction. I will never vote for the Tories because they will just offer the same policy at a slightly slower pace.
““A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.” Taylor Caldwell, Pillar of Iron.
April 8, 2025
We live in islands blessed with a good mix of natural resources, adequate water and decent farmland. We had a well educated workforce, social cohesion and a relatively functional, generally impartial legal system. Regulation was limited. Borders were secure. All that attracted investment
We now try to outsource everything from energy supply to food production, and tie ourselves into the globalist judicial framework. Unaccountable bodies at home and abroad regulate us, and spend our taxes. We’re getting to be a joke, rather like Belgium used to be. Brussels is having the last laugh. I hope we can pull ourselves back.
April 8, 2025
Sir John
What would be the point of electric arc furnaces, they steel they produce is low quality as cheap as chips from anywhere in the World even without the UK’s high energy costs.
Both companies involved in grabbing taxpayer money to stay in the UK are of course foreign, foreign large producers of steel and are more than happy to import the steel to provide for the UK Market. So they have no vested interest in the UK’s steel producing capability.
The big question for the UK Government/Parliament is the safety and security of the UK. Handing the UK’s defence over to the whims and changes of foreign Governments is not protecting the UK. To be clear this is what they have done 100%, its not just the steel for the Navy it is also the command and control (the electronics etc.) of these vessels all now dictated to by foreign state-owned Governments, whose attitudes could change tomorrow – the UK has no say, no power.
This Net Zero zealot attrition of a Government and Parliament that is demonstrating their distaste for the UK is beyond logic and common scenes. One of the stories they tell and it is a story, is that by offshoring the UK Industrial capability they will reduce ‘World’ Co2 emissions – HOW? They make all UK’s capabilities the most expensive in the World, they export as much of the UK’s hard-earned taxpayer money to anywhere in the World for it never to return.
We are exporting the UK’s need for expertise, exporting our defence capability, exporting taxpayer money and so on – just so our Government/Parliament can wreak harm on the UK Country and People.
April 8, 2025
Our close neighbours France, Belgium, Sweden, Germany and Spain all get to supply high quality steel to the UK at the UK’s Taxpayers expense, repeat ‘UK’s Taxpayers expense’.
‘Government transparency disclosures for 2017/18 to 2022/23 show that a total of £173.7m was spent on acquiring approximately 78,000 tonnes of steel for Dreadnought and two other flagship Royal Navy shipbuilding programmes, the Type 26 and Type 31 frigates. All taxpayer money for steel was sent abroad to prop up foreign Governments’
UK workers lose their jobs, UK expertise is no longer needed. And the big laugh the Government and Parliament is having on all of us is NetZero – France, Belgium, Sweden, Germany and Spain keep their ‘blast-furnaces’ going and World CO2 emissions increase. Only the UK Government and Parliament seeks malicious punitive punishment Laws on its people and the country, while increasing World emissions.
No UK defence capability, no UK Auto industry, No UK Steel production, then add in the destruction of Farming and Fishing all imposed on us the by the UK Government and the UK Parliament.
April 8, 2025
Its a sad but true account
April 8, 2025
O/T: I hope China, the EU and UK do not grovel before DJT and let him sweat a couple of days/weeks till ‘Ron Vara’ tells him he had been wrong all along with his tariffs …
April 8, 2025
Ah! You want only the EU to have a free trade deal?
I see China has been downgraded. It needs consumers and there are not many in BRICS.
April 8, 2025
How is President Trump wrong on tariffs ? Yes there will be some shorterm pain and an increase in inflation but then ?
April 9, 2025
Tariffs reduce global economic efficiency, as does the opposite – dumping at below cost prices to try to shut out competition and secure a monopoly. The latter has long been the tactic of China post Mao, with the result that it now has a stranglehold in many key economic areas. Tariff walls only allow industries inside them some relief, but limited to the internal market and its internal resources. They do nothing to undermine Chinese supply networks that tie up large shares of global production of key raw materials. Hence part of the Trump interest in Greenland which has the largest unexploited reserves of rare earths at more easily mined concentrations.
April 8, 2025
Whilst many other nations are already wanting to negotiate with USA and come to an agreement where tariffs on both sides are more beneficial.
But as you say let’s hit back and retaliate with one of our biggest trading nations.
Your lack of business experience is showing hefner.
April 8, 2025
We need to get rid of Putin and support safe, secure democratic system in Russia so we can important Russian gas (and increase trade with Russia). Putin has to go. Have to cripple him in Ukraine.
We need much more gas storage in UK. Our capacity is terrible and compared to other countries too such as Germany.
Our energy strategy overall is very ad hoc. It’s not clear and robust enough. Not enough of a priority when it should be.
Reply Not in UK power to change leaders in Russia. UK has plenty of gas storage in the form of gas field. the government refuses permission to get it out.
April 8, 2025
If more of our own gas is economically viable, then let’s go for it!
But why say yes to that but no to the Putin situations who is on the ropes. Needs one final push, then we’re freed of this menace plus lots more cheap gas and can trade freely and properly with a more prosperous Russia.
So Putin gone makes the UK not just safer (was he behind the Heathrow airport fire? Maybe not. But this is the sort of thing we could see more of with Putin trying to disrupt our economy through subtle, state-sponsored terrorism) but also wealthier and so helps Brexit.
April 8, 2025
Putin is a fantastically popular President. The only criticism of him from Russians is that he is too accommodating and careful.
Where did you get this idiotic idea that ‘we’ should interfere in the election of other countries leaders?
Mind your own business.
April 8, 2025
I love Russian people, the culture, the Russian Orthodox Church and the saints.
But, ‘Putin is a fantastically popular President’ is propaganda.
What is Russia? Where were the proper free elections? Why is Russia’s GDP x 7 less than the USA’s when Russians are just as well educated and have seemingly far more natural resources?
‘‘we’ should interfere in the election of other countries leaders?’ You just made up that argument to fit into your aggressive position to defend Russia at any costs.
‘Mind your own business.’ If Putin hadn’t immorally invaded a sovereign country and so, also, acting like a threatening menace to geo-politics in Europe, then no-one would be talking about him.
At the end of the day, Russia need to get out of Ukraine, give reparations to Ukrainians, and get on with raising the living standard of the average Russian back in Russia including, above all, top health care.
God bless Russia / the Russians (and the Ukraine / the Ukrainians).
April 8, 2025
No, we need Russia to be strong and independent.
You have to believe it, Putin is an ally against the globalists, and we need him on our side.
April 8, 2025
”UK has plenty of gas storage in the form of gas field”
Miliband will cement the entire gas fields to stop the production ….net-zero or bust
April 8, 2025
But the dabate has been dirverted from the disaster of steel, cars and manufacturing to tarrifs.
Tarriffs are trifling compared to this governments efforts to close the UK down.
April 8, 2025
+1
April 9, 2025
We all know Labour are rubbish. But the Republican is meant to be about boosting American trade and so benefits of this for rest of world. There are certainly benefits to moderate, well-aimed tarrifs. But not tarrifs as if you’re playing Christmas Monolopy having downed champagne, wine and port. Trump is damaging the US economy. He simply doesn’t understand how capitalism works in the context of say Boeing that imports many complicated, hard-to-make parts from abroad and at great value thus being able to reduce the price of plane by a big margin and so remaining competitive whilst maintaining quality. And even if Boeing wanted to move all their business back to USA it would be a massive task and they would lose much more money. Business is always trying to cut costs whilst maintaining quality. That’s just the reality of capitalism in the modern era!
April 8, 2025
It seems to be every industry, every discipline and land the UK wants to give away.Why ?Is it because they think in reverse,the mirror image has become the reality or are they just plain stupid!
April 8, 2025
It’s lack of self-respect. Lack of patriotism. Lack of a vision of what patriotism really is.
Patriotism is a beautiful thing.
We need to focus on ourselves first (not in selfish way but to become best versions of selves). Then our families. And then our country.
April 8, 2025
The question is, do they want to save our steel industry. The answer is “no” and they are using the false tale of CAGW/Net Zero to destroy our economy and national security.
The CCC claim that achieving Net Zero will be a net cost of just £5bn/year which means that there is no intended transition to Net Zero just the closure of industries. Yesterday the subject was the motor industry, today it is steel making.
The real goal of CAGW/Net Zero, as well as impoverishment, national insecurity and dependency, is electrification as this will enable control down to the level of each individual through the use of smart meters.
April 8, 2025
Googling around that £5 billion a year I came across this 2023 article supporting the net zero project:
https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/costs-and-benefits-of-the-uk-reaching-net-zero-emissions-by-2050-the-evidence/
It quoted the Climate Change Committee as follows:
“Our central estimate for the resource costs of a more ambitious net-zero GHG [greenhouse gas] target in 2050 are in line with the expected cost accepted by Parliament when the current target was set – an annual cost of between 1–2% of GDP in 2050. If innovation exceeds expectations again this cost could be lower.”
Given that the trend growth rate of the UK economy has been 1.6% a year lower since 2008 they seem to have got it right in the order of magnitude of the costs if not in the routes by which they have arisen.
April 8, 2025
DC :
The CCC write in their recently published 7th Carbon Budget on P10:
“We estimate that the net costs of Net Zero will be around 0.2% of UK GDP per year on average in
our pathway, with investment upfront leading to net savings during the Seventh Carbon Budget
period. Much of this investment is expected to come from the private sector.”
https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/The-Seventh-Carbon-Budget.pdf
I calculate 0.2% to be £5n/year on a GDP of £2.5 trillion
NESO calculate the cost of Clean Power 2030 as “over £40bn annually”
April 8, 2025
As I understand 1-2 % of GDP is what they thought would have to be spent, with most of it recovered.
April 9, 2025
Parliament should reject the 7th Carbon Budget as a work of fantasy and fiction that has no place in dictating policy. Unfortunately Bill Esterson MP, as Chair of the ESNZ Select Committee welcomed it and believes it provides a clear path to net zero.
April 8, 2025
Unlike electric arc furnaces used to melt scrap, blast furnaces use special coal. This was planned to be mined in Cumbria but the government banned it. Mad Ed and his lawyer boss don’t want to allow the UK to make high grade steel. Just as they don’t want us using our own gas and oil- they want us to import everything.
April 8, 2025
How does Mad Ed they think we will pay for all these imports?
April 9, 2025
What about our ability to make weapons and national security?
April 8, 2025
The steel industry and the car industry which you highlighted yesterday between them summarise everything that has gone wrong in this country, and so far there is no sign that any politician recognises why; even Farage is pretty silent about what he thinks on the matter, and all we got yesterday about electric vehicles, described as bold steps, was the promise of more subsidies!
April 8, 2025
We can’t defend ourselves if the UK cannot make raw steel. Tanks and ships/submarines require very high-quality steel, and we cannot trust any other country to supply it at a time of crisis. We should never have allowed China and India to own our steel industry. But when government policy is to make our energy prices far higher than our competitors, it is no surprise making steel is losing money. In addition to that, China’s deliberate policy of dumping steel on the world market at low prices is causing a problem.
But while the PM, Chancellor and Ed, the zealot, worship at the shrine off Net Zero, our industry is doomed.
Trump’s tariffs are the perfect excuse to dump Net Zero, become energy-independent and grow as much of our own food as possible. But that would take intelligence, vision, focus and determination to pout the UK first!
April 8, 2025
More evidence of us moving back to the status of an artisanal society..
Without a good supply of inexpensive energy factories will certainly close – people will go hungry with no jobs, and anyone with half a brain will be reinventing the tools of bygone ages.
The NWO logic seems to state that if car usage is going to be restricted and people will only drive within their local area, why do we need to make cars?
Without the need to manufacture cars the steel industry might as well go to the dogs as well.
There is one proviso in all of this — The moneyed elite, the globalists, and those that made all of this happen will expect to live like lords no matter what happens to the rest of us. They will retain just enough energy and industrial base to keep themselves in the luxury they have come to expect.
April 8, 2025
We are almost all of the same opinion here, well, except for Lemming, obviously, but we are getting nowhere.
It’s blindingly obvious that Net Zero by 2050 is undeliverable, and undesirable, even Badenoch is now saying it, but how many Conservative MPs agree with her, or is the party just running scared of Reform whose members are overwhelmingly against net zero ?
Voting for any other party leader than Nigel Farage is going to allow Miliband and his zealots to continue to drive us towards impoverishment and ultimately, into bankrupcy as a country.
April 8, 2025
The only way to save not just our steel-making, but our entire industrial base is to abandon net zero and go all out to bring our own oil and gas ashore and drastically cut our energy costs. Oh, and for strategic reasons, the government needs to return British Steal to UK ownership and keep our blast furnaces working.
April 8, 2025
Chris S
Agreed, a thousand times over !
April 8, 2025
Spot on
April 8, 2025
At the last count, we are still in the top 7 world economies. It is unbelievable that there will be no indigenous supply of primary steel. Our political leaders should be hanging their heads in shame.
They are obsessed with Net Zero, ESG, EDI and Human Rights.
We subsidise farmers to offshore food production, we tax wealth creators to force them to leave, we fill fracking wells and refuse oil licences to offshore energy production, we import cheap labour to run our care homes whilst keeping the unskilled quiet by providing benefits.
And while all this is happening more and more incompetents are being paid 6 figure salaries out of the public purse.
April 8, 2025
Net Zero as a state policy is well named.
The result of this policy will be an economy generating Zero.
April 8, 2025
The closing of blast furnace to electric arc furnace are due directly to net-zero
The high energy costs are due directly to net-zero
The government steel ‘deal’ is a subsidy; like every other net-zero renewable project
We nolonger have a steel industry due to net-zero ….the government know this, but are hiding the facts from the people
April 8, 2025
Correct; it is the price of power for steel , heavy industry, chemicals etc that is making these sectors uncompetitive in world markets. Let them have the “ real “ cost of electricity before the green subsidies have been added on.
April 8, 2025
Some Telegraph readers are keen to blame lazy workers for low productivity and stagnating per capita GDP but is it not true that if demand for a company’s products declines than average output from each of its workers will also decline until the company acts to reduce its workforce, which it may hesitate to do in case business picks up? In that respect low productivity in the economy may be partly the result of low growth rather than its cause.
Looking at the chart in this article:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/04/08/uk-suffers-unprecedented-fall-in-productivity-as-gap/
I estimate that if the previous upward slope had been restored after the 2008 crisis per capita GDP would now be about 20% higher than it actually is. Which roughly agrees with this comment back in November:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2024/11/16/the-governor-of-the-bank-of-england-should-look-up-the-successful-trade-figures-since-2016/#comment-1484586
where I estimated that it would be about 23% higher. Both these numbers are for per capita GDP, so they have been affected by the rapid increase in the population as well as by the slower increase in total output or GDP.
April 8, 2025
What solar and wind facilities are near this steel plant?
April 8, 2025
As at 4pm we’re, on a sunny & windy day, importing 14.1% of our energy from France (at a high cost) and still having to use 39.4% of fossil fuels …..something doesn’t add up
https://grid.iamkate.com/
April 8, 2025
Sir John:
I have never been more depressed about the future of Britain.
Past Labour governments at least wanted Britain to remain an industrial nation, even if they were inept. Not this one.
An industrial nation cannot be run by wind power. Miliband has embarked on a path to national suicide, and it seems no-one can stop him. He will go down as the single most disastrous man in British history, assuming there is any future in which history is taught.
We are currently quite a rich country, but we have no right to be rich. We can only maintain national wealth if we have a successful economy.
I see a future of decline ahead for Britain. It may be too late to fix things by 2030. Our motor industry will be gone, our steel industry, North Sea oil and gas. By 2050 the British will be a minority in their own country, and I expect later this century Islam will be the dominant religion, and the major political force.
We face a disaster, the end of Britain as we have known it, and it was all entirely self-inflicted. How very sad.
April 9, 2025
It was not only self-inflicted but those of us who predicted it and tried to warn about it were described as conspiracy theorists. How dare our successive governments, from Blair onwards, have not only allowed it but actually caused it?
April 8, 2025
The EU also helped in this demise by subsidising their own factories whilst we did not. Now we have a Chinese owner who has many other factories, no doubt, in China. What do they need us for? You have to get real on this one we missed the boat as is happening with other industries, including the Post Office sell off.
April 8, 2025
If the government continue to pursue their current policies Net Zero will be of no consequence, the country will be bankrupt and off to the IMF.
April 8, 2025
Somewhat O/T but might be of interest to some here: ieefa.org 29/05/2024 ‘Small modular reactors: Still too expensive, too slow and too risky’.
Interestingly another report from EY (ey.com 03/2024 ‘The true power of Small Modular Reactors on the road to a sustainable energy future’, 44 pp) on the potential development of SMRs sees, for the whole world, around 40 of them in 2035 and 250 in 2045. Taking a very strong growth into account this could be 60 SMRs by 2035 and 350 by 2045. But their rentability would be guaranteed only if there are few potential manufacturers of them whereas right now there are many mainly ‘paper SMRs’ being discussed.
It is thought by people familiar with international questions that there will be in any case a minimum of one US, one Russian, one Chinese and one European such manufacturers. So how many SMRs a given company, say RR, would have to build to be profitable, without and with state ‘help’?
April 8, 2025
Renewables get state help.
Why should nuclear power in the form of SNR plants get state help
Or is it only wind and solar that should be in receipt of subsidy?
PS
I don’t understand your argument on reliability only being good if there were only a few manufacturers of such power plants.
If numerous manufacturers are interested and they all meet stringent quality and financial standards then what is your difficulty hefner?
April 8, 2025
typo…SNRs..why should they NOT get state help
April 9, 2025
Sam, Not reliability, rentability … the idea behind SMRs is to be ‘mass’-produced to decrease the cost in a somewhat long series of identical ‘products’. How long such a serie, 3, 10, 20, more?
RR has an agreement with the Czechs to provide 3GW of electricity there, about eight SMRs, good. How many of them are to be built in the UK and Czechia by 2035?
Outsider, Agreed but given the speed at which energy developments are progressing (first RR’s work/publicity on SMRs in the mid-2010s) it might be more prudent to consider the various sides of the arguments, specially when one of the sides is linked to U.Cambridge.
April 9, 2025
Not really answering my question hefner.
April 10, 2025
Oh yes, Sam, it was kind of answered by me and more properly by Mark. No SMR company will be rentable if it builds only a few SMRs, only a sizeable number will make them profitable for the company in charge of building and exploiting these reactors.
In one of its advertisements (I couldn’t find it again) RR was quoting in 2019 £1.8 bn for a 470 MWe product if it could ensure £250 bn of exported SMRs, which at the time meant 138 exported SMRs, obviously all built by RR. Given the future constraints discussed in the EY report this seems a rather difficult prospect.
April 9, 2025
Dear Hefner, The IEEF’s many reports seem to be consistently negative on nuclear, all hydrocarbons, hydrogen and even CCS, but consistently positive on solar and wind backed by unspecified storage. Their SMR report features the infamous Nick Clegg position and the warning that “Investment in SMRs will take resources away from carbon-free and lower cost renewables” . Hardly a clincher.
April 10, 2025
I have just submitted an analysis of the French nuclear programme that started after the quintupling of oil prices in the early 1970s as part of my evidence to the ESNZ Select Committee inquiry on the nuclear roadmap. They succeeded by standardising on a particular low cost design (a US PWR, sidelining home grown designs), sweeping away much of the regulatory process that adds delay and cost, and ensuring that they had the supply chain to build it with the capability to produce the high quality steel needed and the skilled workforce to weld it, and proceeding at pace. That was from a standing start.
The only reason why that success cannot be repeated is the obstructive policies of government that close steel capacity and entangle nuclear development in endless modifications and regulatory delays and deskilling the workforce.
April 8, 2025
Dear Sir John,
It ois easy to see why China turned down the seemingly generous £500 million subsidy because (1) it did nothing to cut world-topping energy costs for blast furnaces and (2) there is great uncertainty over what protection will be offered once the regime of tariffs above a quota, which we inherited from the EU is required to end next year.
In a fantasy world, the UK government could gift British Steel enough Rolls-Royce Small Modular Reactors to slash its running energy costs in exchange for a no-liability financial interest . And then tailor a progressive permanent tariff system to our needs.
In the real world, the anti-nuclear interest has stalled SMR progress for the past three years and there seems no rush to move any faster. Others will beat us. So SMRs will join the long list of “world-beating” UK technology industries hailed by successive government but then not followed through: eg electric cars and vans, graphene, big and small wind turbines and, most absurdly, power-hungry artificial intelligence.
April 8, 2025
Lots of comments here about the apparent insanity and irrationality of the direction of the country.
More than a few who suspect that a certain internal logic and coherence exists therein.
Accepting that there may be, extrapolating the inferences of such can lead to some truly disturbing implications. I would not recommend it…
April 9, 2025
The detailed chemistry of blast furnace operation can get quite complex depending on impurities that must be handled, coke quality and desired carbon content of the product. However if we start with iron ore Fe2O3 at $100/tonne the ore cost per tonne of iron is about $143. Coking coal is about $200/tonne, and you use about 0.55 tonnes per tonne of steel. That produces 1.85 tonnes of CO2 which is subject to carbon taxes which add a further £80 or a bit over $100/tonne to the costs at current levels. It’s a very substantial tax.
April 9, 2025
eastcarb.com 30/09/2024 ‘Electric Arc Furnace 101: A complete guide for beginners and experts’.
Possibly some people might realise that EAFs can produire not only iron-coal steel but steel with additional alloys introduced at given temperatures making the steel even stronger, and therefore adapted to building rockets, tanks and submarines …
April 9, 2025
But the price per tonne isn’t economic compared to other nations.
Our electricity price is too high and we now have to import coal at high prices.
April 9, 2025
British Steel owned by China! What a terrible oxymoron. And who’s British Steel’s main competition? Why! China of course.
Now, what Minister approved that deal? It should have been nationalised rather than handed to a communist country seeking to take over our world.