It took a crisis for the UK to nationalise British Steel – or at least to consider it. But the government might be doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.
Parliament doesn’t often sit on Saturdays. The last time it happened was to pay tribute to Queen Elizabeth II. Before that, it was Brexit. This weekend, it’s over steel — the Scunthorpe steel plant owned by Chinese firm Jingye, now teetering on the edge of shutdown.
British Steel’s Scunthorpe site is one of the last in the UK with blast furnaces capable of producing steel from raw materials.
But after sustained losses — around £700,000 a day, according to Jingye — the company announced it would wind down operations, prompting an emergency response from the UK government.
Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!
New legislation rushed through Parliament will give ministers temporary powers to order raw materials, override company decisions, and even protect workers defying their own bosses to keep the furnaces running.
The move has been hailed by unions as a necessary first step toward nationalisation. And it might be!
But it’s also a stark reminder of something much more troubling: the UK has no coherent industrial strategy — and is now paying the price.
The UK doesn’t have an industrial strategy. It has industrial chaos.
Events at Scunthorpe are part of a much larger pattern. The UK has spent the last four decades selling off or outsourcing vital sectors — water, energy, rail, mail, steel — to private and often foreign companies.
When those owners walk away, Britain is left with no plan B.
Steel production has been handed from one struggling private owner to another — first a British private equity firm, then a failed Turkish bidder, now a Chinese conglomerate. None were committed to long-term sustainability.
And the government has largely stood back and hoped the market would sort it out.
This approach isn’t just short-sighted — it’s actively dangerous.
Energy infrastructure is now largely controlled by firms from France, China, Canada, and Australia. The UK’s rail franchises are operated by foreign state-owned companies — so British commuters are, ironically, helping fund better public transport in other countries. Meanwhile, Royal Mail is in the final stages of being sold to a Czech billionaire.
In each case, the UK still pays the bills — through taxes, fares, or prices — but has little control over strategy, investment, or resilience.
Scunthorpe simply exposes how brittle this system is.
Market value vs. book value: the nationalisation myth
Whenever nationalisation is mentioned, critics raise the same question as a barricade against it. That question is: How would we pay for it?
The price tags thrown around are staggering — often £100 billion or more to renationalise key utilities.
But these numbers are based on a myth: that the government must pay “market value” for private assets. In reality, that’s not the legal standard.
Historically, governments in the UK have compensated shareholders at book value — the original investment cost, minus depreciation.
It’s what the courts accepted when Labour nationalised Railtrack in 2002 for £500 million. There is no legal obligation to pay speculative future profits.
That matters, because paying market value would reward private shareholders for decades of monopolistic profits — essentially making the public buy back assets it already paid to build, at a mark-up.
A study by the University of Greenwich found that fair-value compensation for nationalising water, energy grids, and Royal Mail would total around £50 billion.
That investment would pay for itself in under seven years through reduced bills and more efficient public ownership.
Nationalisation isn’t ideology. It’s pragmatism.
Public ownership isn’t just about fairness — it’s about function.
In publicly owned systems, there’s no need to extract dividends or satisfy investors. That’s why Scottish Water, which remains in public hands, charges households more than £100 less per year than privatised water companies in England — where 35p of every £1 goes to shareholders.
In steel, national ownership could allow for a coordinated transition to green production using electric arc furnaces, without the threat of sudden closures or job losses.
It would also give the UK strategic control over a sector essential to everything from infrastructure to defence.
Even the government appears to be recognising this — if reluctantly.
Industry minister Sarah Jones has acknowledged that there is no private buyer willing to step in, and that the current owners are no longer acting in good faith.
The legislation now on the table is designed to keep production alive until a longer-term solution — including potential public ownership — can be implemented.
China is part of the story — but not the whole story
That British Steel is owned by a Chinese company is no footnote. UK–China relations are increasingly fraught, shaped by rising concerns over espionage, cyber security, and strategic dependence.
The UK has already limited Chinese involvement in nuclear power and banned Huawei from 5G infrastructure. The sudden loss of faith in Jingye reflects this broader shift.
But if the UK is worried about foreign control of critical industries, it needs more than one-off interventions. It needs a policy.
That means asking which industries should be publicly owned, which can be safely outsourced, and how to balance national resilience with international cooperation.
The irony is that countries like France, Germany, and the Netherlands already do this. Their governments own or heavily regulate core infrastructure. The UK used to do the same — before privatisation became an ideology.
What Scunthorpe tells us about the future
The emergency intervention in British Steel is a stopgap. But it might also be a turning point.
The public mood is shifting. A recent Survation poll showed strong support for bringing water, rail, energy, and mail back into public hands. For many, this isn’t about ideology — it’s about common sense.
Why should basic services be profit machines for private shareholders, especially when the state ends up bailing them out anyway?
Scunthorpe shows what happens when you leave essential industries to fail, hoping someone else will pick up the pieces. But it also shows what a government can do when it decides to act.
Whether this crisis sparks a broader rethinking of public ownership — or just papers over the cracks until the next disaster — will say everything about where Britain is heading.
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Here’s why it took a crisis for the UK to nationalise British Steel
It took a crisis for the UK to nationalise British Steel – or at least to consider it. But the government might be doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.
Parliament doesn’t often sit on Saturdays. The last time it happened was to pay tribute to Queen Elizabeth II. Before that, it was Brexit. This weekend, it’s over steel — the Scunthorpe steel plant owned by Chinese firm Jingye, now teetering on the edge of shutdown.
British Steel’s Scunthorpe site is one of the last in the UK with blast furnaces capable of producing steel from raw materials.
But after sustained losses — around £700,000 a day, according to Jingye — the company announced it would wind down operations, prompting an emergency response from the UK government.
Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!
New legislation rushed through Parliament will give ministers temporary powers to order raw materials, override company decisions, and even protect workers defying their own bosses to keep the furnaces running.
The move has been hailed by unions as a necessary first step toward nationalisation. And it might be!
But it’s also a stark reminder of something much more troubling: the UK has no coherent industrial strategy — and is now paying the price.
The UK doesn’t have an industrial strategy. It has industrial chaos.
Events at Scunthorpe are part of a much larger pattern. The UK has spent the last four decades selling off or outsourcing vital sectors — water, energy, rail, mail, steel — to private and often foreign companies.
When those owners walk away, Britain is left with no plan B.
Steel production has been handed from one struggling private owner to another — first a British private equity firm, then a failed Turkish bidder, now a Chinese conglomerate. None were committed to long-term sustainability.
And the government has largely stood back and hoped the market would sort it out.
This approach isn’t just short-sighted — it’s actively dangerous.
Energy infrastructure is now largely controlled by firms from France, China, Canada, and Australia. The UK’s rail franchises are operated by foreign state-owned companies — so British commuters are, ironically, helping fund better public transport in other countries. Meanwhile, Royal Mail is in the final stages of being sold to a Czech billionaire.
In each case, the UK still pays the bills — through taxes, fares, or prices — but has little control over strategy, investment, or resilience.
Scunthorpe simply exposes how brittle this system is.
Market value vs. book value: the nationalisation myth
Whenever nationalisation is mentioned, critics raise the same question as a barricade against it. That question is: How would we pay for it?
The price tags thrown around are staggering — often £100 billion or more to renationalise key utilities.
But these numbers are based on a myth: that the government must pay “market value” for private assets. In reality, that’s not the legal standard.
Historically, governments in the UK have compensated shareholders at book value — the original investment cost, minus depreciation.
It’s what the courts accepted when Labour nationalised Railtrack in 2002 for £500 million. There is no legal obligation to pay speculative future profits.
That matters, because paying market value would reward private shareholders for decades of monopolistic profits — essentially making the public buy back assets it already paid to build, at a mark-up.
A study by the University of Greenwich found that fair-value compensation for nationalising water, energy grids, and Royal Mail would total around £50 billion.
That investment would pay for itself in under seven years through reduced bills and more efficient public ownership.
Nationalisation isn’t ideology. It’s pragmatism.
Public ownership isn’t just about fairness — it’s about function.
In publicly owned systems, there’s no need to extract dividends or satisfy investors. That’s why Scottish Water, which remains in public hands, charges households more than £100 less per year than privatised water companies in England — where 35p of every £1 goes to shareholders.
In steel, national ownership could allow for a coordinated transition to green production using electric arc furnaces, without the threat of sudden closures or job losses.
It would also give the UK strategic control over a sector essential to everything from infrastructure to defence.
Even the government appears to be recognising this — if reluctantly.
Industry minister Sarah Jones has acknowledged that there is no private buyer willing to step in, and that the current owners are no longer acting in good faith.
The legislation now on the table is designed to keep production alive until a longer-term solution — including potential public ownership — can be implemented.
China is part of the story — but not the whole story
That British Steel is owned by a Chinese company is no footnote. UK–China relations are increasingly fraught, shaped by rising concerns over espionage, cyber security, and strategic dependence.
The UK has already limited Chinese involvement in nuclear power and banned Huawei from 5G infrastructure. The sudden loss of faith in Jingye reflects this broader shift.
But if the UK is worried about foreign control of critical industries, it needs more than one-off interventions. It needs a policy.
That means asking which industries should be publicly owned, which can be safely outsourced, and how to balance national resilience with international cooperation.
The irony is that countries like France, Germany, and the Netherlands already do this. Their governments own or heavily regulate core infrastructure. The UK used to do the same — before privatisation became an ideology.
What Scunthorpe tells us about the future
The emergency intervention in British Steel is a stopgap. But it might also be a turning point.
The public mood is shifting. A recent Survation poll showed strong support for bringing water, rail, energy, and mail back into public hands. For many, this isn’t about ideology — it’s about common sense.
Why should basic services be profit machines for private shareholders, especially when the state ends up bailing them out anyway?
Scunthorpe shows what happens when you leave essential industries to fail, hoping someone else will pick up the pieces. But it also shows what a government can do when it decides to act.
Whether this crisis sparks a broader rethinking of public ownership — or just papers over the cracks until the next disaster — will say everything about where Britain is heading.
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (bottom right of the home page). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical
3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com
5) Follow Vox Political writer Mike Sivier on BlueSky
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:
The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
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