very worrying if true, especially for South Wales
report on Guardian

I had a feeling this was going to happen. Do we still own any parts of banks after bailing them out? Maybe we should sell them and buy back our steel industry?

About to be covered on Newsnight now

Reading the comments on the Guardian people are already blaming the EU. Although it appears the MPs may have had more than their fair share in leading to the demise.

Worryingly I cannot see this helping the EU remain campaign. Especially as Wales seems to be already wanting to leave.

Not much in that report.

govt unable to help out as it will break competion rules FFS

What the collapse of UK steel exposes is the failure of the EU to act to maintain its purpose as a protectionist economic zone. By not putting proper tariffs on Chinese steel, the EU (and our own government) have put the final nail in the coffin of the industry.
It also exposes the inherent identity crisis at the heart of the EU. It can’t be a successful protectionist economic zone and a progressive regulatory body. The fact that tariffs have only been applied late and half-heartedly whilst environmental and energy cost issues have not been addressed suggests those in control are happy to let the steel industry go.
Very sad for a lot of people.

I thought that it was [certain members of] the EU that wanted to scrap the lesser duties rule in order to allow higher tariffs to be applied to cheap Russian & Chinese steel imports? But that the (evil) Tories thought this a bit protectionist (tbf, I can kinda understand that as we’d all be screaming as soon as this impacted the price of our products made from more expensive Euro steel etc etc). But at the same time, the Tories think the tariff should be higher. Can the tariffs be raised without scrapping the lesser duties rule? 😕

So by tomorrow, we’ll have Brexiteers blaming the EU for it and the Remainers saying that only by being part of the club can we even hope to save the steel industry. And soon, we get to vote and decide who’s telling the truth. Yeah right. 😆

In the meantime, in an old colonial building in India, someone is (potentially) taking a massive shit on the lives of thousands of workers and their families in a plant that’s already been pulled every which way but loose in an area already on its knees (the Aston Martin plant notwithstanding – but that won’t replace PT steelworks). Funny how stuff turns out isn’t it?

sadly it is probable that the UK will end up with no steel industry – a major concern should be what happens to the environmental clean up costs? current owners will be only too glad to off load sites to anyone that can pay even a token price for them and keep them running short term, go bust and the taxpayer will pick up the billions in clean up costs

Hard to see the economics of bailing out what remains of our steel “industry” ? The cost per job is very open ended as demand for steel has slumped and China, South Korea etc have huge capacity. It is a fact that state support is illegal under EU law, that being said I can’t see the public being willing to pay up year in year out to keep it going.

I can see the logic of Tata’s decsion just offload it even for a few £ to avoid moth-balling costs, clean up risks etc.