When the sun sets on Scunthorpe this Saturday, the town’s steelworks will likely have a new boss – Jonathan Reynolds. The law that parliament will almost certainly approve this weekend hands the business secretary the powers to direct staff at British Steel, order raw materials, and, crucially, keep the blast furnaces at the plant open.
This is not full nationalisation, but it is an extraordinary step. The Chinese firm Jingye will – on paper – remain the owner of British Steel. However, the UK state will insert itself into the corporate set-up to legally override the wishes of the multinational company. A form of martial law invoked and applied to private enterprise.
That will come at a cost to the taxpayer. No number has been specified, but there are wages to pay and orders to make at a site estimated to already be losing £700,000 a day. There is also clear frustration in government at how the Chinese owners have engaged in negotiations around modernizing the Scunthorpe site. «Jingye have not been forthright throughout this process,» said the business secretary in his department’s official announcement about the new laws. Time is so tight because of the nature of the steel-making process.
Once switched off, blast furnaces are very hard to turn back on. If this had happened in Scunthorpe – as seemed likely in a matter of days – then it would have been game over. This move keeps the show on the road and opens up more time for talks over the long-term future of the plant. While the official line in Whitehall is that «all options are on the table,» nationalization seems increasingly likely. That would need more legislation, if it was done – as seems likely – without the approval of the current owner. Finding an alternative commercial partner has not been ruled out, but one is not waiting in the wings either. As for what that long-term future looks like, with just five years of life left in the Scunthorpe blast furnaces, modernization is inevitable. Port Talbot’s plant saw its blast furnaces closed last year amid a switch to the more environmentally friendly electric arc furnaces and a loss of thousands of jobs.
Political figures in Wales are now questioning why nationalization wasn’t on the table for this site. The response from government is that the deal was done by the previous Tory administration and the owners of the South Wales site agreed to the terms. But there is also a sense that this decision over British Steel is being shaped by the domestic and international political context. Labour came to power promising to revitalize left-behind communities and inject a sense of pride back into places still reeling from the loss of traditional industry. With that in mind, it would be politically intolerable to see the UK’s last two blast furnaces closed and thousands of jobs lost in a relatively deprived part of the country.
Reform UK’s position of pushing for full and immediate nationalization is also relevant, given the party is in electoral pursuit of Labour in many parts of the country where decline in manufacturing has been felt most acutely. The geo-political situation is perhaps more pressing though. Just look at the strength of the prime minister’s language in his Downing Street address – «our economic and national security are all on the line.» The government’s reaction to the turmoil caused by President Donald Trump’s pronouncements on tariffs and security has been to emphasize the need to increase domestic resilience in both business and defense.
Becoming the only G7 nation unable to produce virgin steel at a time when globalization appears to be in retreat hardly fits with that narrative. It would also present serious practical questions about the ability of the UK to produce steel for defense and the broader switch to green energy production. Then there is the intriguing subplot around US-China trade. While this decision is separate from discussions with the White House on tariffs, one can imagine how a UK move to wrestle control of a site of national importance from its Chinese owner might go down with a US president currently engaged in a fierce trade war with Beijing. This is a remarkable step from the government, but it is more a punctuation mark than a full answer. The tension between manufacturing and decarbonization remains, as do the challenges presented by a global economy appearing to fragment significantly. But one thing is for sure. As a political parable about changes to traditional industry and the challenges of globalization, the saga of British Steel is hard to beat.
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