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

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y680w62wno

by clarionbell • 6 days ago

153 262 6 days ago

fidotron• 6 days ago

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.

Closi• 6 days ago

Disturbing? In what sense? Other news sources are paywalled and UK citizens have to pay in tax.

UnfitFootprint• 6 days ago

Wait what? Is the NYT not paywalled somewhere?

Arainach2• 6 days ago

I'm not seeing this particular paywall, but disturbing in that the BBC is so awful and stupid at this, presumably.

For many years I would have gladly paid the BBC $20/mo for some way to legally watch Top Gear and Doctor Who. That's it, just two shows and I'll give you more than I give Netflix. They never offered a single legal mechanism available to US citizens, so, well.....don't admit to crimes on the internet and all that.

potatoproduct• 6 days ago

An increasing proportion of UK citizens are deciding not to pay for a TV licence that funds the BBC as consumption patterns have changed.

The BBC will be a zombie in 10 years unless they stop being emotionally driven and sort out their funding.

graemep3• 6 days ago

The annoying thing about the BBC paywall is that it is implemented by using different domains, so (for example here) people in the UK go to bbc.com instead of bbc.co.uk

flohofwoe• 6 days ago

Tangent: disturbing to see many North American news sites thinking they're going to get far by region-blocking European visitors because they don't want to be GDPR compliant ;)

wewewedxfgdf• 6 days ago

Pretty sure there's more than enough in Australia.

Cthulhu_• 6 days ago

Iron ore yes, smelting capacity, don't know, but it's literally on the other side of the world.

philipallstar2• 6 days ago

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.

KaiserPro2• 6 days ago

When I buy something, it doesn't cost my employer, it costs me.

the pedantry here isn't helpful, as its "not other peoples money" is a monetary system that the government lets us use.

I understand that frustration about frivolous spending. It would be better if the argument was on how we evolve and change the steel market here in the UK so its self funding.

BUT!

the whole discourse about "government shouldn't choose winners" is a bit flawed, because we have left it to business to invest in infra, and mostly they've just outsourced to someone else (who's government actually planned with an industrial strategy)

philipallstar2• 6 days ago

When I buy something, it doesn't cost my employer, it costs me.

If someone takes something from you by force and spends it, they're spending your money.

as its "not other peoples money" is a monetary system that the government lets us use

The government doesn't "let" us use it. If we don't use it (e.g. by swapping services directly) then the government gets annoyed and tries to insert taxable transactions into that direct value swap. It makes us use it.

p_l2• 6 days ago

GBP is a fiat currency issued by government through government spending and destroyed by government through taxation, it does not cost the taxpayer it's at worst a bad allocation of resources or incentivization of resource allocation.

iberator• 6 days ago

The government has its own money. For example from national owned companies like airlines, mines, factories etc

Richest countries have a lot of government owned companies. USA is just an anomaly because of Chicago school of economy.

This is a common myth spreaded by free market freaks.

msuniverse2026• 6 days ago

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.

catigula• 6 days ago

The state intervened to stop the Chinese from sabotaging their furnaces. Seems like an open and shut case unless you have 5 eyes intelligence sources.

intheitmines• 6 days ago

See also Chinese companies buying UK private schools and closing them down

Original: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/02/chinese-company-...

https://archive.is/dRQsB#selection-2155.4-2155.79

Choice quote from the article

  Mike Parker, the school’s director of marketing, wrote on LinkedIn: “Whatever you read, this isn’t a VAT story. It isn’t a ‘falling rolls, unstoppable decline’ story. The truth is deeper and more complex and, eventually, the truth will out.”

nephihaha5• 6 days ago

UK private schools spent decades ingratiating themselves to Eastern European gangsters, Arab tyrants and the scions of Asian oligarchs probably including CCP kids. China-pandering has also undermined university education, although the individual Chinese students tend 5o be okay.

I suppose you reap what you sow.

nradov7• 6 days ago

I don't know what happened in that particular case but worldwide declining birth rates will inevitably force many schools to close.

crote• 6 days ago

Sounds like classic private equity, no? Buy it, sell off all the valuable parts, close it down, repeat.

Who needs the Chinese to ruin your country when your own people will happily kill successful companies for the tiniest scrap of profit?

Deukhoofd2• 6 days ago

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.

0x3f9• 6 days ago

You can make this same argument about a great number of things. Why is steel any more critical than food or vaccines or the like? Indeed we got caught short of vaccines recently, and had some nontrivial consideration of running a military op against NATO member over it.

Deukhoofd2• 6 days ago

Food tends to be a lot easier to produce, and many countries do often subsidize their food production, as well as have mercantilistic policies to ensure food production is kept locally.

Vaccines is a more interesting one, and would be something that might indeed be of interest to a nation. On the other hand I don't think many governments are that concerned about another pandemic, sometimes the discourse regarding it very much sounds like "what are the odds it'll happen again"

matt727• 6 days ago

The food example, is the exact reason for large farming subsidies in the European Union. These were implemented as a founding initiative, due to the experience of food shortages during the second world war. A great number of things could be considered critical. Due to the nature of when access could be cut off, the main thing countries likely worry about being able to access, is things humans need to stay alive, and things needed to wage war.

1970-01-013• 6 days ago

Steel comes from iron, which you can't grow. It's more critical than food, which you can grow. Same for vaccines.

remus• 6 days ago

Obviously there are a lot of important things you need to keep a country running, but steel is a key input a in a huge number of very important sectors (infrastructure, military, automotive etc.) so having some ability to produce your own steel seems a sensible hedge.

cucumber3732842• 6 days ago

Why is steel any more critical than food or vaccines or the like?

Countries that import large shares of their food and medical supply chains are constantly trying to develop domestic capacity.

jarym2• 6 days ago

Yep, same can be said of manufacturing capability in general. If you don't have a manufacturing base then inevitably when there's a war you may find yourself unable to build defense components.

t0mpr1c311• 5 days ago

Supply chains are so diversified that self sufficiency is only feasible for countries the size of US and China.

Russia has been forced to cannibalize jet planes because sanctions have starved it of spare parts.

Even the US Navy gets its ships built in South Korea now.

Britain's remaining industries are very niche. With a small domestic market, you can't get economies of scale. You have to specialize.

t0bia_s• 3 days ago

Thats what comrades tried many times in history, allways with deadly costs.

georgeecollins6• 6 days ago

Let's imagine a hypothetical symmetrical war between two modern countries. One can disable the other's satellites and maintain their own fleet. The other can't get access to any third parties' satellites.

You aren't going to send your steel navy out when one side can see you from space and you can't, almost regardless of the numbers. Your big army of steel tanks is useless against a bunch of drones directed by distribute satellites.

wongarsu3• 6 days ago

In a defensive war, a steel navy sitting in spitting distance of your shores and an army of steel tanks will still do a lot to keep the enemy at bay. And you can swap the tank turrets for Gatling guns on some of your newly produced tanks to help against drones

You wouldn't be able to win the war in your scenario, but you could still do a lot to make sure the other side isn't winning either.

pjc5010• 6 days ago

Everyone in this discussion seems to be forgetting Trident as well. There's a lot of assumption the next war will be helpfully similar to WW2, and some sort of reverse sweet spot where we are subject to naval interdiction but will not deploy the strategic nuclear deterrent, and at the same time have enough time to build things, but not things that require any of the rest of the supply chain than steel (I have bad news about the number of ASIC fabs in the UK).

Back to "dead men dominate UK politics". In this case, we're trying to refight a war from 70 years ago.

pseudohadamard• 5 days ago

For Americans wondering why they were making a Judas Priest album public property, it's actually a company based in S****horpe.

caycep• 6 days ago

would it be situational re economies, though?

i.e. if you have a lot of financial resources and can buy 1000 ships cheaply for the cost of propping up your steel industry to build 100 ships, should you buy 1000 ships (or the steel needed to build them quickly) to instead?

idiotsecant• 6 days ago

Drone and satellites don't hold territory.

morkalork• 6 days ago

Steel on its own is inert and useless, you need to retain the entire downstream manufacturing ecosystem that consumes it. Like cars for example, producing steel but letting all your vehicle manufacturers sell off to foreign owners just so you can import BYDs doesn't do you any good.

tonyedgecombe2• 5 days ago

The UK car industry had been doing quite well until Brexit.

ekjhgkejhgk• 6 days ago

I was told by economists that the invisible hand would solve this!

lazide6• 5 days ago

Sometimes a pimp slap is what is needed, but no one ever signs up for one voluntarily.

neilwilson• 5 days ago

Having said that if you have no source of iron ore and no self sufficient energy production you’re stuffed anyway.

The UK ran out of both a fair while ago

lazide6• 5 days ago

Notably, things like that is why they had their colonies.

t0mpr1c311• 5 days ago

Britain didn't run out of coal, it's just in deep seams that are uneconomic to extract compared to strip-mined lignite.

Newcastle is proverbially built on top of the stuff.

Although renewable energy sources and electric arc furnaces that consume scrap are preferred these days.

warumdarum2• 5 days ago

Its also not price competitive as producedin the uk. No high energy industry will survive in europe

warumdarum2• 4 days ago

A political movement that destabilizes the living situation for large parts of the population feeding them to the populists to archieve a lofty abstract goal, thats almost poetic.

traceroute667• 6 days ago

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?

[1] https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/04/09/zombie-politics...

raverbashing• 6 days ago

This sounds good until you run out of steel and out of sellers as well

mr_toad2• 6 days ago

Half of all steel in the UK is imported anyway, and there are many places to obtain it. Unless the UK goes to war with most of the world at the same time, it’s not going to have trouble getting steel.

derektank• 6 days ago

It’s only possible for Dead Man valorizing politicians to be elected because much of the electorate worships the same. They all have parents too, naturally.

traceroute667• 6 days ago

much of the electorate worships the same. They all have parents too, naturally.

Well, yes. But not many of them worship the generation who were mostly responsible for voting in favour of Brexit (60% support among those aged 65 and over at the time of the vote).

flir4• 6 days ago

Fishing holds similar role in the UK and France (at least). Tiny components of the overall economy, giant patriotic feels.

I still think some manufacturing is simply strategic, and you should maintain a capability even at a (financial) loss though.

traceroute667• 6 days ago

Fishing holds similar role in the UK

Indeed and ironically most British people refuse to eat the species commonly found in UK waters, e.g. mackerel etc.

Because the Brits are so fussy, most fish eaten in the UK has always been imported, e.g. Icelandic cod.

And the fact the UK fishermen were die-hard pro-Brexit is odd given they should have been aware that the majority of their regular catch was sold to EU buyers.

georgeecollins6• 6 days ago

In the US that's farming. The "family farm" which is rare ends up being the justification for tons of agribusiness subsidies.

The good news is the USA produces lots of food.

nephihaha5• 6 days ago

That is because fishing has multiple other factors. For one, it is a major component of certain towns and villages, so while it isn't important to big cities, it is on the smaller scale in particular areas. It keeps harbours open and is also a draw for tourists, so I would say it has different implications than, say, shoe manufacturing.

The British chocolate industry was a major employer in some places but has been decimated. British chocolate was certainly not the best in the world but it was better than what it has been turned into in the last few years, thanks to palm oil, international take overs etc.

nialv7• 6 days ago

what a bizarre article, completely disconnected from reality. in what world is manufacturing, a sector that has been neglected for decades at this point, having any sway on politics in Britain.

why does The Economist have so much disdain of manufacturing and people who work in it? look at China, look at their manufacturing industry and what they are able to do with it. then look at the UK, who is struggling to build Hinkley Point C, or HS2 (projected to be the most expensive high-speed rail in the world btw). The Economist is an absolute f*ing joke.

pjc5010• 6 days ago

The point is that manufacturing is a relatively small part of both the economy and the job market; AND the popular view of manufacturing (large plant staffed by a large number of men being the dominant employer of a nearby town or city) doesn't look anything like the reality of modern manufacturing (small run boutique high value stuff like satellites and turbines, highly automated and professionalized, relatively small number of employees).

This leads to stupid decisions like gutting the university sector, which is a major export industry.

traceroute667• 6 days ago

look at China, look at their manufacturing industry and what they are able to do with it.

"look at China" what ? Have you seen the population size of China ? Have you seen the geographic size of China ?

Remember what is often said when Mr Trump talks about bringing tech manufacturing back to the US ....

Yes great idea Mr Trump. But even with the most generously optimistic figures, due to the lack of available workforce and space the US could only ever provide the capacity equivalent to one Chinese manufacturing town of which the Chinese have dozens.

gruez6• 6 days ago

in what world is manufacturing, a sector that has been neglected for decades at this point, having any sway on politics in Britain.

Are you confusing the lack of effective interventions with "neglect"? Nearly every administration in the past decade had some sort of an industrial policy, but even though they failed to bring manufacturing back to britain, that doesn't mean "neglect". It just means the forces of globalization is too strong.

linksnapzz5• 6 days ago

The Economist is a mouthpiece for the money power, specifically the banking interests of the Rothschild and Cadbury families. The idea of making money by making things (as opposed to arbitrage) is anathema to them.

ifwinterco• 6 days ago

The economist is pravda for the global globalist class.

It's not at all surprising that they're hostile to the idea of a nation doing anything to take its fate into its own hands when it comes to supply chains etc.

jmyeet• 6 days ago

The Economist is a neoliberal dish rag.

There is a completely made up number that is an increasingly large portion of GDP in OECD nations and that number is imputed rent [1]. This is a fictional number that owner-occupiers "pay" themselves to live in their own houses. So as housing prices go up, so does imputed rent. House prices have increasingly become the best vehicle for investment funds because the returns are esentially protected. But none of that produces anything.

The UK in particular has been described as buy-to-let economy.

It doesn't have to be this way. If you limit property speculation then capital will find something else productive to do, like manufacturing. Dish rags like The Economist present it as inevitable that Western nations become financialized. It's simply not true. Look at Germany. Also look at the fact that Germany greatly limits the collaterialization and speculation on property. That's not an accident.

[1] https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2023/02/14/10-or-gdp-is-...

greyw• 6 days ago

In Switzerland this fictional imputed rent is actually extremly real. We have to pay taxes as if it was earned income.

So you live in your fully owned flat, pretend to rent it to yourself and then pay income taxes on that amount. The point is your government can make this "fake" value very real.

Luckily we recently voted to abolish this tax so it will be gone in some years. This tax was introduced as an emergency measure in ww1.

KaiserPro2• 6 days ago

I mean yes, that makes sense.

But, the issue is about capacity. Steel and metals generally are a core part of the UK economy. Yes we could just buy it all in from outside, but when geopoltics intervenes it leaves us high and dry (see natural gas, chemical production, wire making, transformer making, etc etc)

If we end up in a war, which seems fairly reasonable, then we need to have access to a manufacturing, not only prototypes, but large scale manufacturing. we need not only the machines, but the people, experience and pipelines to keep that working.

mr_toad2• 6 days ago

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.

p_l2• 6 days ago

Until something happens that disrupts the supply chains from abroad and suddenly there's an issue

8note8• 6 days ago

if theres supply chain disruption abroad, its probably going to affect the ore and coke exports too

jarym2• 6 days ago

2 things: a) Government plays a part in the cost of things - especially years of mis-investment around energy generation has sent British prices to the stratosphere and employment taxation levels greater than those 'cheaper' producers. b) The 'cheaper' producers are still _producers_ and thus have control - if they need to hoard their own supply they will, or if they need to leverage it for some political gain they might.

patall2• 6 days ago

The same is, as far as I can grasp it, true for butter, bread, milk and eggs. Only there, it is already established.

10000truths• 5 days ago

Isn't this exactly the kind of problem that tariffs are meant to address?

carterschonwald• 6 days ago

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

patall2• 6 days ago

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.

bell-cot• 6 days ago

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.

zmmmmm• 6 days ago

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.

petcat• 6 days ago

There was a time when people would have felt safe enough to rely on the multiplicity of strongly allied nations with steel production capability. [...] nations that were previously considered reliable strategic partners no longer are behaving that way.

Is this supposed to be referring to the US? Because as far as I know USA has never really exported much steel to the UK at all. It's an importer of British steel.

Maybe it's referring to European allies? Or South Korea?

wongarsu3• 6 days ago

Steel production is on the decline in most first world nations. In case of a large-scale war there simply wouldn't be a lot of surplus to send Britain's way

rsynnott• 6 days ago

What, again?

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

hn_throw2025• 6 days ago

The history is longer and more tangled than that.

1951 - Nationalised by Attlee (Labour)

1953 - Re-privatised by Churchill (Conservative)

1967 - Nationalised again by Wilson (Labour)

1988 - Privatised again by Thatcher (Conservative)

1999 - Allowed to merge with Dutch Hoogovens into Corus by Blair (Labour)

2007 - Allowed to be sold to Tata Steel by Blair (Labour)

2016 - Tata allowed to sell to Greybull Capital by Cameron (Conservative)

2020 - Takeover by Chinese Jingye under Johnson (Conservative)

I worked there for three years in the mid 90s.

Personally, I think it should have been left alone after 1951.

But it is arguable whether ideologically driven militant unions would have destroyed it in the 1970s and 1980s.

lpribis• 6 days ago

The UK loves to take various infrastructure and industries private and public depending on which government is in power at the moment. See also trains, water, etc

nickdothutton• 6 days ago

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.

cliglot• 6 days ago

There is plenty of surplus labor available with the right economic incentives.

Instead the “Economic incentives” go to the Chinese owners who then learn that Americans are not interested in working in a sweatshop and instead rely on third parties to supply them with illegal workers and engage in white collar crime.

I’m suspicious of “re-industrialization” pushes because everywhere I’ve ever lived it’s resulted in at best a foreign company given massive tax breaks to create a few hundred low paid button pusher jobs and maybe a handful of better paying technician jobs.

derelicta• 6 days ago

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

tonyedgecombe2• 5 days ago

We did do that for banking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_Kingdom_bank_rescu...

metalman• 6 days ago

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

yanhangyhy• 6 days ago

yeah, free trade. chinese save a shit company and then UK force take it.

nikau6• 6 days ago

Meanwhile Australia's last remaining manganese plant shut down last night...

defrost6• 6 days ago

It wasn't economically feasible, the owners wanted out, no buyers stepped up.

Numbers wise it was ~ 1.6 million tonne per annum in a global market that demands ~ 20 million tonne per annum, as a smaller producer in Tasmania with other factors dragging down it wasn't competitive with South Africa, Gabon, and Ghana.

Australia’s only manganese smelter to close, administrators say - https://www.mining.com/web/australias-only-manganese-smelter...

nikau6• 5 days ago

right - but in the context of this thread, manganese is a vital ingredient to smelting iron - so Australia seems it is no longer self sufficient.

tmtvl• 6 days ago

The government is the only entity which can gain money from running a business at a loss. For example: running trains at a loss will reduce car traffic, thus reducing losses from traffic jams and reducing road maintenance costs. With steel the government can recoup losses from producing cheap steel through steel-dependent services like roadworks, the military, public housing,...

inigyou5• 5 days ago

Yet the privatised water companies are still pumping raw sewage into rivers to save money and make more profit?

goobatrooba3• 5 days ago

I had not realised UK still had mining for iron ore, but it seems it's even a net exporter [1]. In that case it really makes sense to keep such a strategic industry alive as both the up- and downstream companies would suffer if it's shut down.

[1] https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/iron-ore/repo...

codelikeawolf• 5 days ago

I immediately thought of the Judas Priest album and agreed that supplying heavy metal to the UK is indeed vital.

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

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