British Steel and the death of dim-witted globalisation

The dewy-eyed and rather dim-witted vision of globalisation is dead, I think for good. Labour is to effectively re-nationalise British Steel in Scunthorpe and in making the announcement that Parliament was to be recalled, Sir Keir Starmer said: ‘This afternoon, the future of British Steel hangs in the balance. Jobs, investment, growth, our economic and national security are all on the line.’

The crucial part of that sentence is ‘national security’: an acceptance that trade does not happen in a vacuum, separated from the rest of life. It was always contingent. It was never sensible to have the Chinese running our only virgin steel blast furnace, just as it was not sensible to allow the same country to run our nuclear plants.

Yet if you are a free-trader then you believe explicitly that there is no harm in such arrangements – because the pursuit of profit will ensure that even companies from hostile countries will manage the foreign industries they own with diligence and efficiency.

It was always a dangerous nonsense and if Vladimir Putin hadn’t made us think again about adhering to the free trade paradigm, then both Donald Trump and the Chinese have sharpened our concentrations a little, it would seem. Trade is, in the end, another – powerful – weapon at the disposal of sovereign states. Meanwhile, we need to start making stuff again, lots of it.