Ross Clark Ross Clark

The state bailed out our banks. Should it also save our steel industry?

‘We cannot have a situation where the banks are able to privatise their profits and nationalise their losses,’ declared Vince Cable in 2008 in the midst of the banking collapse. But steel companies?  That is a different matter. Cable has demanded that the government take on the pension liabilities of Tata’s British employers in a last gasp attempt to attract a buyer and save the plants.

On the subject of nationalising pension liabilities, Cable has form – as business secretary he forced the taxpayer to take on the responsibility for paying postmen’s pensions so that he could sell off the Royal Mail – which he did, at a giveaway price. The taxpayer might have preferred it had the government clung onto the Royal Mail’s huge estate.  No sooner had the company been privatised than it started selling the sites of redundant sorting offices to feed the London property boom.

Cable was right first time around.

Comments

Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.

Already a subscriber? Log in