It has taken a crisis, a pandemic and a near collapse of an industry for the British government to muster the courage to do what it should have done a decade ago: block the gravitational pull of foreign ownership over our strategic industries. This week, the Department for Business and Trade signalled it may block a proposed £300 million payout to Jingye, the Chinese conglomerate that acquired British Steel in 2020. The message is clear: we are no longer content to be a car park for global capital.
Let us set the stage. British Steel, the last bastion of our once-great metallurgical might, was saved from insolvency by Jingye at the height of the pandemic. At the time, it was a rescue; today, it looks more like a leveraged takeover. Jingye promised investment, jobs and carbon neutrality. Instead, they have extracted hundreds of millions in dividends, while the furnaces at Scunthorpe cough and splutter. Now they want to withdraw a further £300 million from the pension surplus, leaving the workforce and the taxpayer to pick up the tab.
The government’s intervention is not just about money. It is about the very concept of sovereignty. We have spent forty years genuflecting at the altar of market fundamentalism, selling off our crown jewels to the highest bidder regardless of origin. The result? Our steel industry is vulnerable to the whims of a regime that does not share our values or our long-term interests. This is not protectionism, it is prudence. It is the difference between being a subject of history and a driver of it.
Critics will howl about investor confidence and the sanctity of contracts. They will claim that blocking the payout will deter foreign direct investment. But what confidence is there in a country that allows its strategic assets to be strip-mined? The next pandemic, the next conflict, and where will our steel come from? The lesson of the Roman Empire is that a state that cannot feed itself or arm itself is a state that will be consumed by others.
The parallels with the Victorian era are instructive. Britain’s industrial supremacy was built not on laissez-faire but on active state intervention: tariffs, patent laws, and the Royal Navy’s protection of trade routes. We forgot this after 1979, and we are now paying the price in rust and unemployment. The decision on Jingye is a small step back towards sanity. It will not reverse decades of decline overnight, but it signals a change in mood. The question is whether the government has the nerve to follow through.
Let us hope the lion has not forgotten how to roar. The alternative is a nation that sells its steel for scrap.
