UK Steel is screwed. That is the long and the short of it.
Like coal before it and shipbuilding, the heavy industry we once had is going
the way of the dinosaur. “But what will the workers do?” comes the cry “The
government must step in and save the industry!” Their hearts may be in the
right place, but who pays for it?
Somebody trying to persuade for Remain was saying the
other day that "45% of UK exports go
to EU but only around 7% of their exports come to the UK". Maybe so, but
that is spread across 27 other countries. It would be physically impossible to
trade equally with a population 8 times our size. For instance, if we exported
50% of our production to 5 other countries and they each exported 10% of theirs
to us we’d have an overall trade balance yet a massive trade surplus with each
of them if we mix and match our ‘facts’ to make our argument, the way
socialists do.
Socialism is complicated; take housing... (See how I am
changing the subject so as to appear knowledgeable while still nevertheless changing
the subject – it’s the dialectic, or something.) I want to buy a house, except
I can’t afford a house. But if I demand that the state just gives me one it is
only going to upset the bloke next door who has scrimped and saved to buy his.
So the state will build me a house (probably a bit bigger and better than the
one next door because, you know, standards) charge me a subsidised rent, then
pay me that rent back in housing benefit. They’ll have to cover the council tax
as well and pay my national insurance, so I get a full pension and obviously
cover my general running costs because I’m boracic and I certainly can’t afford
it.
The bloke next door is looking at me in a funny way now.
He’s envious because he thinks I have more than he has. That’s silly; we have
the same, but I don’t pay for what I’ve got as I don’t have a job. That’s not
my fault because I don’t have any qualifications, which is because I could never
really be arsed at school. Anyway, unlike me, he doesn’t have time to get
really annoyed because he is greedy and has a second job to go to. Me, I have
plenty of time, which I spend on Twitter, complaining about the government and
the fact that those bastards want me to suffer austerity so they can keep the
NHS going or something.
So the state taxes low earners to subsidise no earners.
And it taxes companies so they need to keep their costs down, so they import
cheap workers from poorer countries – who want to come here because the wages
my neighbour can’t live on are still much better than theirs. Then they get to
live here, pay virtually no tax – even though the government pretends that they
do - while receiving tax credits and housing benefit and child benefit and so
on – and send money home so that in a few years they can buy a house of their
own in their own country; unlike me, here at home.
My neighbour can't afford to retire in England as he has a mortgage to repay, but he's thinking of moving to one of the poor countries made even poorer by the
migration of all their workers, where he can buy a cheap house and live off his savings and his UK state pension. People like him take money out of the UK but spend
frugally so don’t really do much for those poor countries they move to except
to encourage more Brits to move abroad and buy cheap houses, so pushing up the
prices which means the workers in those countries still have to migrate to Britain to
earn enough to buy a house...
Anyway, in the socialist utopia all this is normal. The state should make everybody happy. The way
to do this is to spend money. We haven’t got any money and you would think we
can’t spend money we don’t have, but you’re not thinking, my friend. We can
either earn money – oh no, evil capitalism – or we can do it the kinder way. To
build our dream home we just have to borrow money we will never be able to
repay but that’s fine because the state can just print more to make what we borrowed
worth less, so that eventually repaying it becomes pointless anyway. Other
countries have to do the same because we‘re not paying them back, so they have
to borrow more and so on. In the end, everybody owes everybody else so much
that I think we just write off the debts and shake hands.
Could it be overmanning?
As a socialist I’m a bit hazy on the finer details, but I trust
a future Labour government to sort it out and say no to brutal ‘Tory Cuts’.
Save the steel and solve the problem, I say. Then do the same with energy, housing,
transport, trade, jobs, education, health, defence... On balance, though, maybe not today, maybe not next year but sooner or later UK
steel is still screwed.
