The government stunt before the local elections of taking powers to override the Chinese owners and the managers of British Steel at Scunthorpe failed to save Labour from electoral loss. We now need to be told how much all this will cost UK taxpayers. It has the makings of a financial disaster resulting in the loss of many jobs.
There is first the need to sort out the ownership. The Chinese owners will contest their liability for costs and losses since the government took over issuing the orders. Company law will be in conflict with the imprecise statements in the emergency law to “save” the blast furnaces and jobs. The government clearly wants the owners out as there is such a big disagreement over the future of the plant.
The second is to find a new owner/ manager to take over the responsibility for the business, with agreed levels of subsidy which will be needed and could be high to keep open the present plant.
The third is to return to the US trade talks and negotiate the freedom from super tariffs on our steel exports as the government originally claimed.
The fourth is to agree a plan with the new management over the likely life of the current blast furnaces and any necessary investment into them .
If the government is unable to find a new owner/ manager and has to nationalise, all of the above need to be done through a new nationalised Head of British Steel. Taxpayers will then have to take all the risks and pay all the bills, instead of limiting exposure to an agreed level of subsidy.
If nationalised all the capital spending as well as the losses have to be included in public spending. Those who argue for nationalisation fail to tell us how much all this costs. They also imply it will save all the jobs and gives eternal life to two very old blast furnaces. I do not believe them. At current energy prices in the UK a blast furnace will not be internationally competitive.
June 18, 2025
We are likely to become the only G20 country without primary steel making facilities. This of course is welcomed by the shower in government because it reduces our CO2 output
With the disinvestment in oil and gas exploration we will continue to import from abroad. Centrica I believe, have just signed a £50 billion with Norway for gas.
We now have turmoil in the Middle East and the possibility of the Straights of Hormuz being closed which makes Milibrains decisions even more stupid.
How can Scunthorpe steel even begin to survive when the likes of Network Rail puts a £140 million order out to international tender.
There is something rotten at the heart of government
June 18, 2025
No it does not even reduce CO2 output in reality it just exports some CO2 production and the jobs.
Anyway a bit more plant, tree and crop food is a good thing. It greens the planet nicely.
HS2 to be paused it seems, another moronic project that damages the environment hugely for zero benefit, as does the total insanity of net zero. Can we pause that too?
June 18, 2025
James Dyson talking sense in the Sun today.
SIR JAMES DYSON Britain’s ruling class is killing aspiration and undermining our future prosperity – it’s time we fought back.
Well yes but how Sunak and the Tories stuffed us with 14 years of Consocialism and now 4-5 years of class war let’s kill growth and net zero lunacy from Labour.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/35449254/britain-ruling-class-killing-aspiration-james-dyson/
June 18, 2025
We are almost embalmed and he thinks we should fight back now! How precient!
June 18, 2025
A massive volcano in Indonesia erupts today, ‘Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki spewed an ash tower more than 11km into the sky on Tuesday’ -https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/c0rvwrqgqljo
So I did a quick check of how many eruptions in 2025 this year –
‘There were 54 confirmed eruptions at some point during 2025 from 54 different volcanoes’ – https://volcano.si.edu/faq/index.cfm?question=eruptionsbyyear&checkyear=2025
…..which isn’t man-made so doesn’t effect the UN IPPC climate change figures
June 18, 2025
its a bit like a few walkers on the Dorset beaches being blamed for the cliff falls….could they tippy-toe to reduce vibrations please?
June 18, 2025
something? – or everything?
June 18, 2025
@Ian wragg – +1
The majority of the UK’s Legislators are dedicated to the destruction of the UK, that is more than half of its 650 MP’s and half of the approx 800 unelected unaccountable Lords along with their appointed bureaucrats. They know they are destroying the UK as they are sending our money elsewhere to prop up other regimes that are happy to receive it. Removing the ‘seed-corn’ from the UK never to return, a resource down the drain. They know they are losing UK jobs, long term expertise, and the right to exist. they know they are destroying the economy. It is malicious intent on their part by creating impositions and laws that none of the UK’s competing nations are engaged in.
I find it hard to believe that more than 725 individuals can create this mess in a vindictive malicious way without thinking it through – so it has to be their aim all along
June 18, 2025
So even the 5 year failed health sec., PPE dope and tax to death Jeremy Hunt thinks Lucy Letby needs to be given an appeal for her absurdly unsafe 15 convictions! Well as they say a stopped clock is right twice a day! WHAT A dire legal system the UK has! Have they let the other Lucy Connolly out yet?
June 18, 2025
Good morning.
For which the US Administration will demand further concessions elsewhere.
What if the UK Government did not get involved and left the steelworks to its fate, previous governments have left smaller business to theirs thanks to the SCAMDEMIC ? If no buyer, then the government could come in and buy it at a small cost and debt free.
This is the problem when you have politics melding in matters that it is ill equipped to deal with. None of these MP’s or Civil Serpents are business leaders and so none can make decisions based on ‘best interest’. look at President Trump ? He acts in manner that is foreign to most, and yet, seems to be able to get things done, less those who are trying to thwart him.
And what do we have ? A bunch of lawyers, activists, spivs and chancers.
June 18, 2025
“Spivs and chancers”!
So true, and nobody holds them to account because it’s all too difficult and embarrassing so Britain goes down the chute as a result!
June 18, 2025
Unfortunately this bunch of lawyers, actors, spivs and chancers are the less talented ones.
June 18, 2025
@Mark B @Snowdrop +1
As stated elsewhere(Telegraph) yesterday –
“A new elite of international lawyers and judges, empowered by international courts such as the ECHR, unleashed “lawfare” in the name of “human rights” against the very nation states that had created these rights.”
Laws, real Laws can only be created by democracies and those empowered have the right to amend and repeal to suit the wishes of the People. This pseudo Cabal is as said are “Spivs and chancers”! profiteers that should be banished
June 18, 2025
Steel is a headline strategic industry. How many others are there, which don’t get media scrutiny but are closed or closing, due to our self-imposed high energy pricing?
Could it be that there’s no point in “saving” steel, if all these other key elements of maintaining self sufficiency for military/strategic purposes have gone?
June 18, 2025
All sound questions and concerns. The potential to manufacture anything economically, depends on the input costs and the selling price potential. As the market price for world steel is set in the manufacturing countries of India, China the two biggest steel producers, both using coal as their prime energy source, it is doubtful the UK with a ban on coal extraction and a ban on gas extraction or prospecting will be able to compete on price.
With that fundamental barrier to success in place UK steel production will become simply a public sector cost with zero profit potential. The only way the UK can recover its manufacturing or any sort will be via least cost energy which means coal and gas and the permanent end to the Net Zero legislation.
It is an unlikely development this side of a change of government.
June 18, 2025
@Rod Evans – both protected regimes that are undermining real trade
June 18, 2025
The decline of British Steel reflects the decline of British industry at large. High taxes, hostile regulations, high energy costs and a shrinking capital market are defining characteristics of the problems that beset businesses. Successive governments have contributed to the decline, though the current Labour government must be one of the worst since WW2. We have the odd spectacle of Innovate UK splashing the cash to help fund novel, potentially game changing, technologies while elsewhere the government will strangle, with taxes, regulations and energy costs, those businesses that make it past square one to the point that they can generate revenues, cash flow and profits. The country is run by morons.
June 18, 2025
The government certainly does need a costed plan for the steel plant at Scunthorpe.
The two blast furnaces (“Queen Anne” and “Queen Bess”) are indeed old, but can continue for many years without replacement. British Steel was forced to close the Queen Anne blast furnace at Scunthorpe last year after Jingye used poor quality coal, demonstrating their incompetence in steelmaking. Much of the alleged £1.3 billion loss Jingye made last year was the subsequent re-lining and restarting costs for the Queen Anne blast furnace. This blast furnace is now effectively brand new and will operate more efficiently with the new control system
The blast furnaces run on cheap coal imported from Australia and the plant has just secured a 350,000 ton order for rail track steel from the UK. The plant is close to the source of cheap wind electricity from the N Sea and if managed in-house using the experienced British workforce, will quickly return to profitability. Particularly if the debt that Jinye loaded the company is taken out of the equation.
Reply What is your source for saying Anne has recently been relined. I think that unlikely given the plan to close it.
June 18, 2025
SG : “The plant is close to the source of cheap wind electricity from the N Sea and if managed in-house using the experienced British workforce, will quickly return to profitability.”
Electric Arc Furnaces cannot make high grade virgin steel. Wind is the most expensive electricity we have. Don’t these electric furnaces need a reliable supply of electricity rather than intermittency?
June 19, 2025
@ SJR – reply
The problems with Queen Anne arose after the company started importing cheap coke of the wrong specification, after Jinye closed the plant’s own coke oven batteries in 2023 – with the loss of 250 jobs. British Steel refused to comment on the reasons at the time. If blast furnaces cool down rapidly it basically destroys the lining, which then requires relining to restart. Plus, it costs a lot of energy to get them back up to the high temperature necessary for the iron-making chemical reactions
While switching off blast furnaces is relatively common practice for refurbishment, the process must be highly controlled. Otherwise, the cooling of the inside of the furnace causes iron and slag to harden, causing cracks to form in the internal lining, which must then be replaced. Restarting a cooled furnace can take months. You are essentially looking at a complete rebuild of the inside of the furnace, which is what happened
June 18, 2025
Labour’s attitude to planning is waiting for the shambles they cause to become most damaging and then to wonder what to do next.
June 18, 2025
Anything run by the State is inefficient, expensive, and usually the worst option, but on some occasions it may be better than allowing a foreign power to be in charge.
June 18, 2025
@Berkshire Alan. – 1
Although is a business from a protected Foreign State with protected ownership anything more than the weaponising of trade by that State
June 18, 2025
Ian B
I thought the post today was about UK government policy, hence my comment about the situation here.
For clarity I do not think we should have the basics of life, like water and power, in the hands of foreign companies, I would sooner they be nationalised by our own government, even if they were less efficient, at least we can vote for change every 5 years.
June 18, 2025
@Berkshire Alan – we are sort of at cross purposes, brevity doesn’t always work. The idea of steel being sold off once more or bailed out by the taxpayer when it then falls into Foreign hand especially to Foreign operations when they themselves are protected in their home markets and/or are owned by their governments does not get us competitive producers. As you say government are the last place any business should end up. Also hence my phrase ‘weaponising of trade’ – keep production out of the UK and you control the UK
Events have over taken us again – Ministers said today(Tuesday) that the Chinese Scunthorpe Steel plant had been handed a £500 million contract to make 80% of the new rails for Network Rail. The rest will be foreign produced. The deep pockets of the taxpayer at work with taxes and profits leaving the Country to support others.
June 18, 2025
Plus the workforce will be unionised and likely to go on strike if they don’t feel the government subsidy is high enough.
June 18, 2025
Your final sentence is the key one. You can’t have internationally competitive manufacturing with ludicrously expensive energy – which this government, even more than previous ones, wishes to maintain. Goodbye heavy industry and all the skills that go with it.
June 18, 2025
Reject the scientific nonsense of a “Climate Emergency” and its irrational child Net Zero and exploit our natural coal, oil and gas natural resources whilst developing nuclear power, thus allowing the recovery of manufacturing, including steel, and cheap reliable energy for consumers.
PS You wouldn’t then need winter fuel supplements for the elderly.
June 18, 2025
You can’t make steel without coal. We can’t have coal because the fools in Government believe in ‘global warming’ climate change’ climate boiling’ or whatever it’s called this week.
Plus they have put mad Ed Milliband in charge of our energy system …………………
June 18, 2025
OA – A corollary to that… Standing on the platform at Broadmeadow Station Newcastle NSW a few weeks ago, watching hundreds of trucks of coal then hundreds of trucks of steel rolls being shipped through the station. Apparently (according to Google) Newcastle port exports 149 Million tons of coal annually.
And what are our Government and the previous administration doing here…
June 18, 2025
we buy poor quality coal, with stones in it, from Poland.
June 18, 2025
And are they sending the coal ‘to Newcastle’ Tyne & Wear?
June 18, 2025
Correct.
If we had an economy that encouraged and rewarded entrepreneurship we would have more business selling more stuff the rest of the world, generating more profits and therefore greater tax revenue.
But when you have people who are devoted to the ‘politics of envy’ you get what we have – decline !
June 18, 2025
Oops !
Sorry, the reply was to Oldtimer92.
June 18, 2025
Will we get a believable costed plan for HS2 today?
The opening of HS2 will be delayed beyond the target date of 2033, the BBC understands.
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander is expected to tell Parliament on Wednesday that there is “no reasonable way to deliver” the railway line on schedule and within budget – but is not expected to say when the route will finally start operating. She is set to outline the findings of two reviews into HS2, one of which points to a “litany of failure” leading to missed deadlines and ballooning costs.
It is the latest setback for the high-speed rail project, which has been scaled back and delayed repeatedly.
Alexander is expected to say that Conservative governments presided over the cost of HS2 rising by £37bn between 2012, when the line was first approved, and the general election last year.
June 18, 2025
Four years to build a new frigate for the Royal Navy – why so long and was any of our steel used? How long will fitting out take?
June 18, 2025
No one wants a business that is only permitted by law to produce low grade and recycled steel. It is as cheap as chips from everywhere, even then the UK can’t compete with market prices.
The requirement is for using the UK’s expertise and talents to produce ‘high grade steel’ The Chinese and Indian steel makers in the UK are happy to take massive taxpayer subsidies as they get it both ways, paid to not produce then supply from their home counties the steel we need to exist. The UK loses expertise, jobs and money.
As it stands the UK’s Legislators, Government, Parliament etc refuse the UK’s existence by producing constraining laws that our competitors don’t have. France our neighbour is permitted to produce high grade steel; our government wants to ‘give’ the French Government UK Taxpayer money so we can have steel for our ship building program – how can that be remotely sane.
June 18, 2025
The latest delay and cost over-run for HS2 is a perfect illustration of the hopelessness of Governments when it comes to managing commercial projects. If the recent Conservative Governments had not been so left wing they would have cancelled HS2 at the first opportunity. The fact that private capital was not interested said it all from the start with HS2, and the absence of a private buyer for, or investor in, British Steel should have made the Government pause before it jumped in. Anyone but a politician would find it obvious that Steel production cannot be competitive in this country because of its excessive cost of energy.
June 18, 2025
@William Long +1
That’s right – the issue is that to be an industrial nation we need to produce a lot of things ourselves to be competitive. Steel is vital for that.
That was made impossible because of the way HMG has been denying us cheap energy and filling the void with insane environmental regulations.
June 18, 2025
Sir John
Why nationalise. These are defunct bankrupt companies with no value, why not just support with the right loans etc the management and the workforce to become a self-standing entity in their own right.
My thinking here comes from the success of VW in Germany, created in its present form by the UK’s Armed forces after the war and owned by those involved and employed on a day-to-day basis. It is now an Industry Power House – including its coal fired power stations
Government must keep its nose out of actually running things, we haven’t seen one this century even capable of running themselves, let alone a country – a business that would be a poor taste joke. Yet those that actually do the job find the markets just occasionally need a leg up, a loan guarantee to get past go.
The only kick back would be the existing owners won’t want a competitor in their market place, they are protected industries at home and like the control that gives them. The we have the Government and Bureaucrats will want to be in charge on a day-to-day basis, they no nothing but like reflected glory.
A Market works from being a market, a space driven by competition – so what we need is more start ups not buy outs and knock down prices
June 18, 2025
Sir John
The US situation could be more complex. If the UK just becomes a back door stepping stone for others to circumvent the meaning behind the tariffs, then it becomes and outlier, part of the problem. Chinese/Indian steel from the UK is blurring and tainting the definition of tariffs against UK Industry. If the majority ownership, therefore taxes, dividends etc for these enterprises are paid into other domains and not ‘solely’ into the UK should they get the same benefit as a UK owned and based company?
Correctly POTUS’s beef is that US jobs are exported by unfair, unreasonable and not reciprocated arrangements. As far as steel goes from the UK that would mean the Chinese/Indian makers would still get to undermine US jobs and wealth. The UK’s Legislators are happy to destroy the UK but it shouldn’t follow that others will destroy their own nations
That would follow for the Auto industry vehicles just ‘assembled’ in the UK are they UK produced. The EU in its wisdom a few years back had the definition that 60% of actual manufacture had to take place before something can be classed as ‘manufactured in’
In the round what is needed is a better way to balance things, anything coming from behind protected barriers, receiving subsidies, direct taxpayer handouts, is something trying to distort and undermine trade and the market. Companies are just as much at fault they seem to ‘hate’ competition and will contrive every which way to protect them selves from it including government interference.
June 18, 2025
We shouldn’t really expect HMG to have any joined up plans for Steel manufacture in this country – producing steel goes against every last phrase of ABSOLUTE ZERO, the schedule for deindustrialisation.
The problem HMG have is that they don’t want to make it all too sudden otherwise people would really cotton on to what they are doing. A small inch at a time is their motto. So in the meantime they run our state like a theatre, putting on little plays here and there to make it look like they are responding to our wishes and looking after our interests.
The truth is that HMG wants to stop all industrial production in this country – we will become the new desolate 3rd world country with no prospects and certainly no energy, while the rest of the world, excluding the EU, prospers – but they’re not quite ready yet, there are a host of oppressive Bills to get legalised to banish our freedoms before they finally pull the plugs and herd us into camps.
June 18, 2025
If ever there was a ‘do not start from here’ warning, this is it.
I don’t think JR could achieve all that is required to be done.
Only fool rush in where angels fear to tread.
June 18, 2025
228 criminals were smuggled, in plain sight, into the UK yesterday; and escorted from the safe country of France…
June 18, 2025
gc
Deliberate action to reduce the UK to a third world status by encouraging the third world to come with free accomodation, free healthcare, £40/week pocket money, free TV licence and the freedom to roam our streets taking black market jobs. Any sane country would be locking these people up prior to deportation for the safety of its citizens or having saved them at sea returning them from whence they came.
June 18, 2025
They’ve hit the jackpot
June 18, 2025
I take it that they are all males ?
June 18, 2025
no! children were crying hoisted on men’s shoulders wading above waist height thinking they would all drown.
June 18, 2025
A bit like the dunkirk evacuation in 1940 …..but its not our army returning, nor the women & children escaping the german army adance
June 18, 2025
Sir Keir Starmer suffered his own embarrassing mishap at the G7 summit when he mistook an interpreter for South Korea’s President. The Prime Minister, who the day before had to spare Donald Trump’s blushes when he dropped their trade deal papers on the floor, shook hands with a translator instead of Lee Jae-myung as they met for formal talks.
June 18, 2025
He’s still someone’s hero
June 18, 2025
I imagine his mother loved him.
June 18, 2025
The Labour Party want to replace him with Angela Rayner.
I despair!
June 18, 2025
The money to fund important strategic assets required for our country’s defence would not be an issue if we did not have a Civil Service determined to reduce the country to a third world state by importing the third world (even encouraging unidentified young men of fighting age with freebies denied to our own citizens) whilst allowing them to keep their culture, laws, customs and grievances and sabotaging our energy and hence economy with Net Zero.
June 18, 2025
Why are sooooo many people so gloomy about our great country’s future (‘great’ not in arrogant sense). I hear from sooo many people in everyday conversation. I still think our country has a GREAT future. In terms of economy, science, education, health, sport, arts, architecture, wildlife, family life, patriotism – and the rest BUT as ever, we need divine help. Like the Jews of the desert trying to return to Israel.
People need to cheer up!
God bless the UK
June 18, 2025
I do not know if you have noticed, but there has been a few things going on, such as closing down perfectly functioning power stations. Power stations we need to keep the lights on.
No energy = No future. Just Ask South Africa.
June 18, 2025
You been in rehab?
June 18, 2025
He said no! no! no!
June 19, 2025
No! I’m enjoying life thank you very much.
June 18, 2025
One needs a backbone of steel and logic . This right/left thing has been exposed by the internet.
June 18, 2025
It’s unlikely that this lot will get in again but with a supposed change of government would there actually be change or are these government officers just doing the dirty work for the real leaders ?
June 19, 2025
Presumably, if all that is sorted out and British steel survives, public procurement contracts needing steel will be mandated to buy from British Steel rather than at lower prices on the open market. The Government could ban imported steel except for special types zBrit8sh Steel is unable to produce at any price.
Only a government intent upon destroying Britain woukd do this. But what can we expect from one that kills babies?