Nigel Farage & Reform have been warning about steel industry for weeks – it’s no surprise they’re edging ahead in polls
HOW many more times will we see the men from the ministry arrive to take control of part of Britain’s dwindling industrial supply?
How many more emergency Commons debates will we need as ministers drive to strip carbon from our factories and homes in just 25 years?
Saturday’s surreal scenes in Westminster and Scunthorpe should serve as a line in the sand, before they become a monthly occurrence.
Whatever noble intentions our unilateral dash to Net Zero by 2050 may have once had, even its most enthusiastic supporters must surely accept this is not what the public were sold.
And I very much doubt even the least impressive lobby-fodder MPs would have blindly voted to mandate this into law if they knew what it really meant.
I can’t remember being told the Royal Navy would be on standby to escort imported coking coal at double the price had we mined it here, with heaven knows how many more polluting travel miles behind it.
Disaster movie
Did we really imagine sending junior officials from Whitehall to a three-day battle to keep a blast furnace going or risk losing it for ever — and with it our last domestic capacity to produce critical virgin steel?
Were we warned there would be an open acceptance, at Cabinet level, that a Chinese company had been deliberately driving a British plant into the ground, leaving us a dangerously vulnerable outlier in the West, entirely dependent on imports just as the world is becoming increasingly isolationist?
These read more like plot lines for the opening of a disaster movie rather than what was meant to be a week so quiet the PM had been due to go on holiday.
Surely someone in the Government is going to play the role of the boy in The Emperor’s New Clothes at some point and stand up and say: “Stop!”
Instead, before it is even clear the Scunthorpe plant can be saved, we have ministerial backslapping and lofty claims Labour have won the day for the national security interest.
Their Net Zero zealot-in-chief Ed Miliband, fresh from another expensive jolly around the world on another jet, even had the gall to claim it was a victory for a party “standing up for British steelworkers and industry”.
He boldly boasted: “This government is delivering the muscular industrial policy this country needs in uncertain times.”
Try telling that to North Sea oil and gas workers or the chemicals industry so reliant upon fossil fuels.
Or to the 2,800 skilled steelmakers fired from Tata last September in Wales.
Where was the emergency legislation then, despite similar cries for help?
And hey, at least if you drive what’s left of domestic manufacturing into the ground with impossible energy costs, there won’t be any goods for people to pay tariffs on!
No, the Net Zero reality check still seems some way off for Red Ed.
Declining industry
The most telling sign in the short term of any wake-up call will be whether Labour slams on the brakes on allowing hostile firms linked to Beijing to sweep through any more of our declining industry, or if we continue to hand them contracts to build the solar, wind and hydro infrastructure urgently needed if we are to even keep the lights on in the coming decades.
The mess in Scunthorpe proves Chinese firms, and their Communist Party overlords, cannot be trusted, despite warnings at the time that we were letting the fox into the hen house.
A giant wind farm in the North Sea is up for approval, with a Chinese firm in line to make the turbines and build factories in the UK as part of a promised £600million investment.
UK security services say it could allow Chinese spies unfettered access to monitor our subs and coastlines or to simply turn off the power.
Surely it is time to call that one in, given the very clear warning tale of British Steel?
But if climate jihadis like Miliband will still not now join the reality-based community when it comes to Net Zero, this will need to come down to the ballot box.
The Tories have more than a lion’s share of the blame for all this mess, but the reality is this Labour Government is now in power, and the music is stopping on their watch.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has been on her own Net Zero journey after loyally defending it in government, despite her own reservations — but the turn-around will still sit heavy with many voters, I suspect.
Humiliating drama
So it was no surprise to see Nigel Farage failing to swallow that light smirk of his when he popped up on the BBC yesterday to correctly point out he had been calling for a full renationalisation of British Steel days before Labour realised they were up the creek and ordered MPs back from the ski slopes and Easter holiday.
The Reform leader and his deputy Richard Tice have been sounding the Scunthorpe warning alarm for weeks, so it’s little surprise to see them edging back into the lead in some polls this weekend.
Labour triumphed last year in regaining their northern Red Wall heartlands, paving Starmer’s path to dominance in Parliament.
But analysis by pollster Peter Kellner shows their vote share in these industrial parts of the UK actually went DOWN in 31 critical seats.
They won them back because the Tory vote collapsed by a greater amount, thanks to Reform eating into their support.
Now Farage is warning the PM he is here to finish the job and take swathes of those seats for himself.
Net Zero will be front and centre of that push in the very parts of the country that will be hardest hit by the ideological fanaticism to hit it by 2050.
And should he succeed, Downing Street will only have themselves to blame.
After last week’s humiliating drama in Scunthorpe, no one can say they were not warned.
SWEETNESS and light in the Shadow Cabinet at last?
At a recent tactics meeting of Kemi Badenoch’s top team, her former leadership rival Robert Jenrick discussed an intriguing conversation he’d had with SNP leader Stephen Flynn.
His boss immediately grilled him on why on earth he was cavorting with the Scots nationalists.
Attempting to laugh it off, Jenrick smiled sweetly and replied: “Oh I’m friends with everyone”.
Which had some others round the table spluttering, given they suspect the ambitious Shadow Justice Secretary is not exactly a team player . . .