Cutting One's Cloth...

"We will; we shall; we intend to; it is projected that; etc., etc."; the tired old mantra of the Tories in power [the clue to their actual success rate on any of the issues so to referred is in their customary use of the future tense], has become "We would have, given sufficient time, had the election result not turfed us out on our ineffectual backsides." In today's extraordinary sitting of the Commons to debate the emergency legislation over the future of UK steelmaking, specifically British Steel's Scunthorpe plant, all one heard from the opposition benches was the kind of whining better suited to the playground: "Sir, Sir! I would have done it better than them!".

The fact is that the Tories, over the last several decades, sold off practically all of British industry to the most convenient foreign bidders - undoubtedly with mighty favourable reciprocal kickback deals in return - leaving the country at the mercy of a succession of gigantic corporates, mostly on the other side of the world. Say what you might about our current government and its rather wayward-looking economic strategies, but at least in this one instance they seem to have realised that once this particular economic crown jewel has gone, it will be gone for good; and have hastened to act to prevent its loss. Given the idiocy emitting from the States at the moment, I would say that the hedging of this particular supply chain is entirely apposite and timely.

Trump always claims the indeterminate future too, with every idiot utterance of his: "We'll dig, build, drill, etc., America Great Again, folks; it will be beautiful, I promise you that!". But from what manufacturing base? Most of it is already gone, as in much of the rest of the Western world. The cost and timescale of such a rebuilding of a major industrial infrastructure would simply be prohibitive, what with the US already sitting on top of a debt mountain of $36tn. One has to ask the question: how will the US economy survive in the kind of economic isolation that Trump so rabidly seeks? At least Starmer and the UK Labour government have been quick enough to recognise the significance of both the potential impact of the Trump tariff war and the fact that we, at least, still have some manufacturing capacity left in this archipelago. I for one welcome this [almost] re-nationalisation of a key industry, and it's not before time, either. Bring on the rest of it: the time for timidity is over. The Right are screwing themselves into self-contradictory knots: it's time to ignore them and get on with building a future instead of just promising one. It's been done before, it can be done again. And to paraphrase Napoleon: "Never interrupt your enemy while they're fucking themselves up..."