Posted on 04/12/2025 6:39:35 AM PDT by MinorityRepublican
Parliament has been recalled for a rare Saturday sitting to pass an emergency law aimed at saving British Steel's Scunthorpe plant from imminent closure.
Sir Keir Starmer said the legislation would allow ministers to "take control" of the Lincolnshire site and stop its Chinese owner from closing its blast furnaces.
The move opens the door to a full nationalisation of the company at a later stage, with the prime minister saying "all options" remained on the table.
Talks have been taking place this week to keep production going at the firm, after owners Jingye said its blast furnaces were "no longer financially sustainable".
MPs and peers are currently on their Easter break and were not due to return until 22 April, but both are now going back to Westminster for the hastily convened sitting.
Parliament sat on both Saturday and Sunday on the outbreak of World War Two in 1939. And there have been only five occasions since then when it sat on a Saturday, showing the importance the government is placing on the law.
Speaking at Downing Street on Friday, Sir Keir said the government wanted to pass the legislation in a single day, adding the future of the company "hangs in the balance".
He said steelmaking was "essential for our future" and that he would always "act in the national interest to protect British jobs and British workers".
"Jobs, investment, growth, our economic and national security are all on the line," the prime minister said.
The BBC understands from a senior government source the emergency legislation being voted on in Parliament on Saturday would not give ministers the power to nationalise British Steel - another bill would be needed to do that.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
What could go wrong?
The British obsession with “climate change” made them go all in on bogus “green” energy making British energy prices sky high, WAY too high to make steel.
The irony is the communist Chinese owners of the steel plant understand economics better than the descendants of free market Adam Smith.
I’m no fan of the ChiComs. But their management of British Steel would have to be better than what Starmer and his pals could do.
If Starmer does take over, I suppose he’ll install windmills and solar panels to power the plant.
That might work. But only if he plans to actually produce no steel.
Work will stop several times a day so the ruling muzzies can raise their butts to aloha snackbar.
The British make steel that leaks oil even before its turned into cars and machine parts.
Take a hard look at what caused these plants to have financial problems in the first place. Hint: Check the Green policies that have been shoved in their face. Then ask yourself this: How many businesses has the gov’t run better than the private sector can manage them? In the US, Amtrak and the Post Office are indicative of gov’ts management ability. Probably similar in the UK.
“Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said...his party would try to amend the emergency legislation to nationalise British Steel immediately, calling public ownership “the only option we have to save this vital strategic asset”.”
And that’s REALLY the question. Does the UK want to continue producing steel or not. If yes, they either have to find a company to run it at a loss, or run it at a loss themselves. The question for the UK is whether steel is still a ‘vital strategic asset’ or not. While Francis Fukuyama might say no...pretty much anyone with a brain would think otherwise.
Actually making something is irrelevant to socialist “job creation” projects.
Socialists think “no longer financially sustainable” is the foundation of long term government takeover.
I’ve been to France 5 times, starting in 1969 and the last time was in 2018 and the treatment of US tourists has always been the same: crappy. I speak French enough to get by, but there’s no hiding the fact I’m American. It used to be that they appreciated the effort to speak their language, but not any more. Methinks they have forgotten that, without us, they might still be speaking German.
Twice.
“The workers must control the Means of Production. Or at least the government should control it.”
Sounds like a Monty Python sketch
Maybe this is simplistic, but if the British want to make their own steel, even if it costs more than buying it from another country, I see nothing wrong with that.
Yeah LOL 😅
UK can’t make up their mind whether the government or private entities should own the means of production ...
Thatcher spent her whole career in selling off all of the government owned corporations and factories after the UK spent decades buying them ...
now the UK is going back to pre-Thatcher days ... [OTOH, the UK should have never allowed the chinese to own even a single brick in the UK] ...
same is true for the U.S. ... just wait until the chinese decide to close down all the meat-packing plants they own in the U.S. as retaliation for tariffs ...
Nah, just once. Or not at all.
But for American involvement in WWI, WWI would have come to a grinding halt somewhere in Europe proper, a better peace struck with Germany and the handful of legitimate beefs Hitler used to confound and confuse normal people with his BS would have not been able to grab a foothold, possibly preventing his rise to power.
“Methinks they have forgotten that, without us, they might still be speaking German.”
of course they have: that generation and the next have died off ...
OTOH, we forget that the French fleet is what enabled the Continental Army to ultimately win the Revolutionary War ... one of the few wars the French actually helped to win ...
The British Empire would have survived the Great War. Perhaps Germany would have remained intact.
America would have been less likely to become woke in the aftermath of Cold War. Marxists took over our Universities 100 years ago. We did nothing about that.
Perhaps Joseph McCarthy was on to something. We needed more guys like him. He was the only person who said anything about it.
Many comments reflect the idea that British regulation, union rules, Greenness, energy costs, etc., make production in Britain uneconomical, with China closing its “UK” steel plants over costs and operations issues. All that may be true.
Seen another way, here you have China buying up basic industry in other countries, then shutting it down, leaving that country with no choice but to import steel. China takes a short term loss, but once China controls enough of the steel production, it can jack up prices to a level where countries without domestic production can’t competitively manufacture products using steel either. Must buy Chinese finished goods. Must rely on China for weapons and munitions. This is all part of a long term scheme to hollow out and control the older economies of the world.
For once, Labor has it right. Next it should take the chains off their own industries, develop nuclear power, and let their producers be competitive.
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