The British Government requested that the House of Commons be recalled from its Easter recess on Saturday, April 12th, for a special sitting dedicated to saving British Steel’s plant in Scunthorpe from imminent closure by Chinese owner Jingye.
Saturday’s rare parliamentary session will aim to pass an emergency law aimed at preventing the closure of the Lincolnshire town’s blast furnaces. While there is a local dimension based on saving thousands of jobs, there seems to be a dim recollection of the sovereigntist importance of being able to manufacture ‘virgin’ steel, independent of the fluctuations of global trade—without Scunthorpe, the UK would be the only G7 country to lack this capacity.
For Keir Starmer, the new legislation would allow ministers to “take control” of the loss-making site, although he has stopped short of saying whether this would involve fully nationalising the firm. While Labour has yet to admit it, the move could also defy its (doomed) ‘Net Zero’ orthodoxy, which has a strong preference for electric arc steel production over blast furnaces.
