We need to talk about British Steel
Last week, British Steel confirmed plans to shut down its two blast furnaces on the outskirts of Scunthorpe in North Lincolnshire, some of the last of their kind in the country. The replacement? A pair of electric arc furnaces and a lot of empty rhetoric about green steel. But the reality is blindingly clear: this wasn’t a transition. It it was a fucking execution.
The writing’s been on the wall since South Bank went cold in 2015, and Port Talbot started sliding toward its own managed decline. What’s happening in Scunthorpe is the final stage of a long, slow betrayal that’s been decades in the making. And now, under a Labour government that promised to stand up for industry, we’re getting the same market-worshipping cowardice, just with a red rosette on the press release.
Steel tells you all all you need to know about the disconnect between the ruling class and the people they claim to govern. The steel industry is that important that the EU was born out of protecting it as the Iron, Coal and Steel community in 1951. Steel was created by Bessemer in Sheffield and Teesside Steel built bridges around the world. Neither cities have a steel industry to speak of now because politicians have never seen the strategic value of it. The problem is our Governments only have five year terms and our leaders only realise steel is important when it becomes important. Did you know steel making is covered in the Official Secrets Act? Of course - we don't want our enemies to know steel thicknesses and mixes as they'll know our military weaknesses. British Steel built the world and only now after asset stripping the whole industry and decimating communities is it suddenly dawning on these hapless fuckers are that we need a steel industry
Yes, Labour is 'intervening' but let’s not kid ourselves. This is too little, too late, and still stuck in the same failed logic that’s gutted British industry for forty years. Keir Starmer’s government is offering just enough public money to maybe keep the blast furnaces open a little while longer, but they’re still begging for a private partner to swoop in and 'secure the future.' A private partner. For a strategic national asset. You couldn't make it up. Except of course that's exactly what's been happening since Thatcher, and both of the main parties have their hands in this particular turd-bobbin barrel.
There's a big question here. While we rattle sabres at China and it's clear we are looking at potential conflict in the future, China owns British Steel and is the key supplier for steel to the UK. WTAF??!!
For now, British Steel is in the hands of Jingye Group, a Chinese conglomerate with no interest in the long-term future of this country. They’re here to cut costs, strip assets, and do whatever Beijing’s five-year plan requires. And this country, under a Labour Government, thinks the answer is to go cap-in-hand to some hedge fund or foreign multinational to “save” us. It would be laughable if it wasn't so pathetic. If this is what Labour calls 'securonomics,' then it’s not worth the fag packet it’s written on the back of. The truth is, no serious country lets its steel industry be run by overseas firms who couldn’t care less whether the furnaces stay lit or not. Steel is strategic. You need it for defence, for infrastructure, for rail, shipbuilding, energy: you name it, we need steel for it. You can’t 'transition' away from steel any more than you can transition away from oxygen. And what’s this shitmuppetary about electric arc furnaces being the future? Fine: yes, they’re cleaner, if you’ve got a reliable domestic supply of scrap steel. But we don't. We scrapped our scrap cycle along with everything else. So we’ll be importing that too, like we already import coking coal from the other side of the world in Australia, because apparently digging it out of the ground here and employing British workers idoesn't look good on a spreadsheet.
And we need to nip the greenwashing bullshit that's abounding about this that is pretending this is about climate change. It’s not, it's about capital, nothing more nothing less. It’s about what’s profitable for the people who own the industry, not what’s right for the country, or the planet. And the twatonomic idiocy runs deep. The financial model around steel Steel operates on a 25-year cycle. This means there are times when it looks like it's making massive losses and other times when it's making huge profits. It’s slow, heavy, long-term investment. It’s not fintech. It’s not a delivery app. You don’t turn a profit in two years. But we’ve been ruled for decades by politicians who can’t see past the next quarterly report, let alone the next Parliamentary term. Now we’ve got a Labour government led by a former prosecutor who thinks 'industrial policy' means finding a few billion behind the sofa and handing it straight to a private equity firm. A view backed up by Rachel from accounts who so out of her depth she should be wearing scuba gear. This rot started under the Tories, of course and the days of Thatcher and McGregor. More recently. back in 2011, George Osborne gleefully watched China dump artificially cheap steel across Europe, attempting to destroy domestic producers. When people begged for a bailout, he lied and let the country down. He said EU state aid rules tied his hands. Meanwhile Germany and France protected their industries, because they actually gave a shit. But not us. We let it die. We sold it off. When Redcar foldied I was there and I watched the town die while it's piss poor MP used the closure as a photo opportunity. And now we’re paying the price.
And here’s what really takes the piss about this whole sorry episode: we’re gearing up for a confrontation with China while at the same time letting them own our bloody steel industry. We’re still importing Chinese steel. We still have Chinese involvement in key infrastructure. At one point they were even involved in building our nuclear reactors. It’s insane. It’s strategic self-harm. Let me ask you one question. If we do end up going to war with China - who exactly are we going to get the steel from to make our military equipment, weapons and ammo?
If the US goes to war with China - quite frankly we're fucked. We know they'll drag us into it and our leaders will be too weak to stand up to them. We already know they have booby trap chips in lots of expensive electronic kit, they have massive investements here and were even involved in our Nuclear industry! And we let them own our Steel works. While I do not support warmongering at any level - who in the right fucking mind though this was a good idea. Politicians: knowing the cost of everything and the value of fuck all since 1832.
And now Labour is doing what the Tories did before them, just with a sad little moral gloss and a few softly spoken soundbites. Well it’s not enough and it's not fucking good enough. Every attempt to 'partner' or 'incentivise' private investment in strategic industries ends up the same way: more public money wasted, more jobs lost, and more control handed over to people who treat national infrastructure like a shopping basket on the FTSE. Let’s be absolutely clear: every privatisation in this country has been a disaster. Water? Poisoned, price-hiked, and foreign-owned. Energy? Run for profit, not people. Rail? Fragmented, overpriced, and broken. And now, steel: gutted, outsourced, and left to rot. The answer isn't a public-private partnership. The answer is public ownership. Full stop. Nationalise British Steel. Invest in the long-term. Keep the furnaces open. Build up scrap infrastructure. Train a new generation of steelworkers. Use it to fuel our infrastructure, our defence, our future.
The news at the moment on getting fuel for the furnaces is quite frankly reading like a game show. Can we get the fuel to the furnaces on time, with hour by hour updates on where the fuel is. This is a distraction to hide the incompetence that we haven't got a back up plan. What it isn't telling you is what happens when the furnaces go cold. Well as the fifth generation of families that have been making iron and steel in Wales, Sheffield and Teesside since the 1860's I'll fill you in on this. Letting a blast furnace go cold is like sticking two fingers up at decades of industrial graft, engineering know-how, and generations of steelworkers who kept the bloody things running through war, recession, and Thatcher's slash-and-burn economics. A blast furnace isn't just a big metal oven, it’s the heart of a steelworks. A heart I saw at first hand been ripped out of my community. You don’t just turn it off like a kettle. If you let it go cold, the molten iron and slag inside solidify. And we're not talking about scraping burnt cheese off the bottom of a pan, we're talking tons of rock-hard industrial gunk fusing to the walls, turning the whole thing into an enormous, useless monument to misfuckingmanagement. Restarting a cold blast furnace? That’s a logistical nightmare. You need serious cash, time, and skilled labour, the very people governments like to sack and then whinge about having a 'skills shortage.' You might as well build a new one from scratch, which, of course, the bean-counting parasites in suits will never do, because they'd rather ship everything in from abroad and bang on about 'efficiency.' Letting a blast furnace go cold isn’t just an engineering clusterfuck, it’s a political choice. Just like it was a political choice in Ravenscraig, Port Talbot and South Bank. It’s the final nail in the coffin for local jobs, the community, and any shred of industrial sovereignty we had left. But the twatocracy in Westminster don’t give a toss. They’ve never been within pissing distance of a steelworks, never mind done a shift in one. To them, the only furnace worth keeping hot is the one under the ministerial trouser press. So yes Sir Kier, don’t let the bastard thing go cold. It’s not just about steel. It’s about not handing over your future to a bunch of chinless, pinstripe dickheads personified in Rachel from accounts who think Britain’s strength comes from spreadsheets and speeches, not sweat and steel.
And that's it isn't it? This isn’t just about steel. It’s about whether Britain wants to be a real country or just a flag pinned to a hedge fund’s quarterly earnings report. And if Keir Starmer won’t do it? Then he’s just another manager of decline, smarter than Sunak, but every bit as fucking useless.
