Tories committing industrial suicide with Tata Steel

Op-ed: Less than a year into the first stand-alone Conservative government in the UK since 1997 the writing is on the wall.

When the Daily Telegraph sometimes dubbed the Torygraph by Labour supporters posts a lead story Thursday titled "Britain sacrifices steel industry to curry favour with China" it looks like it is all over and we await the fat lady bursting into song.

The Telegraph piece makes some interesting points whether it is motivated by the upcoming EU referendum or not.

That report says "What we know is that the British government has for the last three years been blocking efforts by the EU to equip itself with the sort of anti-dumping weaponry used by Washington to confront China. The EU trade directorate has been rendered toothless by a British veto. So much for the canard that the UK has no influence in Brussels."

It also says "China has captured 45pc of the UK market for high fatigue rebar steel, from near zero four years ago. The price of hot rolled steel in Europe has fallen to $369 a tonne from an average of $650 from 2009 to 2013. This is why Tata Steel has been losing £1m a day in the UK, not helped by Britain's punitive of power costs."

Stabbed in the back then by the British government.

Jeremy Corbyn, Labour party leader, met with steelworkers this week and is working hard to get parliament recalled unlike Cameron but the question is why are the Tories happy to sacrifice what is one of the UK's last big industries?

Many will ask who is making money out of this and include in those questions the stock market out of Chinese investors.

Then there is Chancellor George Osborne's love affair with China.  Still not as close as Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt who married Lucia Guo, who comes from Xi'an in China, in 2009.

Osbornes handed the Chinese the keys to Britain sometime ago in a gamble which has not paid off.

"The British are sacrificing an entire European industry to say thank you to China for signing up to the nuclear power project at Hinckley Point, and pretending it is about free trade," said one official in Brussels bitterly.

Failed budgets by Chancellor George Osborne, David Cameron resorting to true to form Tory bully boy politics in parliament with his carefully dumbed down accent going to the wall as he used a suspect Labour List to strike at the Labour Party, cuts made to child tax credits and benefits for people with disabilities going hand in hand with big pay-outs for the very wealthy of the UK all carried out under claims of austerity measures, a national crisis playing out yet Cameron did not cut short his Easter jolly to Lanzarote and no early recall of parliament from recess as 15,000 jobs look set to be lost.

Tory priorities from day one May 8, 2015, were not pretty. Push through the EU referendum sooner than necessary and overturn the hunting act. The latter is on hold after a public outcry. Sneak in damaging legislation as parliament begins a recess so that it can get through unchallenged and so much more.

At least after the 11th hour Tory business secretary Sajid Javid, who spent Easter at the other side of the World in Australia, finally returned to the UK, but that was only to say 'Nationalisation not the answer' to Tata Steel job losses.

Cameron back in Britain has now echoed that statement but perhaps British Steel should not have been privatised in the first place.

Remember British Steel was privatised in 1988 by the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher. It merged with the Dutch steel producer Koninklijke Hoogovens to form Corus Group on 6 October 1999. Corus itself was taken over in March 2007 by the Indian steel operator Tata Steel.

What a different story it would be if the jobs were in London or about to hit his beloved banking sector and corporations.

That would be because such a crisis would hit the pockets of some tory voters, an elite band of investors and probably Tory coffers both personal and political.

India is pulling the plug on British Steel.

The business has been failing and losing money for some time.

But could it be saved and become profitable again?

If the British government used its own industries and the products they make there would be no problem.

But with outsourcing the name of the game and cheapest and privatised is always best the Tory game plan that seems unlikely.

But if Tata Steel goes it will take many with it; that huge industry like others is not a stand-alone enterprise.

And then there are communities.

When you let an industry die few workers survive well; less money is spent locally and shops and other businesses close; the standard of health declines as people cut corners inevitably costing the NHS more money.

But hold those thoughts.

The Tories have a game plan.

Whether you believe it or not they are paving the way to privatise healthcare and abandon Northern cities under alleged claims of independence from Westminster in their Northern Powerhouse plans.

As many have rightly surmised it will be a Northern Poorhouse and the majority of jobs linked to it right now are all in London.

If the Labour party or perhaps any others apart from the Tories were managing a Northern Powerhouse plan it could be different but these 2016 Tories snatch ideas and twist them to their own ends.

So what will they do to save thousands of jobs and the steel industry?

Handing our industrial needs to another country is suicide?

Related reading:
UK nuclear future handed to France and China
HS2 now as Osborne hands China the keys to Britain

[Recalling parliament from recess would be costly but has been done when it suited the Tories and doing nothing will cost more in the long run-but with so many holidays perhaps we need to address that issue also]

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2016-17 sessionRecess
House rises
House returns
Easter 24 March 2016 11 April 2016
Early May Bank Holiday 28 April 2016 3 May 2016
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