Progressive Destruction

                                           Sounds great unless you know the facts

For a few days the story had to be covered. The British steel industry that once accounted for more than 40% of world production is closing down. And with it the death knell has sounded for all remaining heavy industry in the UK. Because the same factors which have done for steel doom the other 700,000 people who work in energy-intensive industries.  

This should be the story of the decade for the left. Britain’s productive heart is going out of business and with it hundreds of thousands of well-paid working class jobs are disappearing. And all this under a Conservative government! What’s not to like for your average firebrand leftie?

But despite these obvious attractions the story has died and it was with evident relief that journalists turned to give the trivial Cameron tax avoidance “scandal” 24/7 wall-to-wall coverage for a week. Even if it were a story of criminal tax evasion it still wouldn’t compare in importance to the death of Britain’s manufacturing industry. But it isn’t. It’s a story of a man legally avoiding tax. As if anybody in their right mind would pay taxes that they could get out of legally. The only really newsworthy part of the story should be Cameron’s earlier hypocritical vilification of tax avoiders.

The reason the left is distinctly muted in its outrage over the closure of the steel industry is that even the slightest reflection on the issue reveals their complicity in its destruction. You simply cannot be devout advocates for slashing CO2 and support British industry at the same time. You must choose and our overwhelmingly left-wing intelligentsia has chosen.

How else can a carbonless economy be achieved than by shutting down energy absorbing industry? Ever since Miliband’s insane 2008 Climate Change Act passed almost unopposed, Britain has been committed to reducing CO2 emissions to 20% of the 1990 level by 2050. In short it has been the explicit policy of the Labour, of the coalition and of the Conservative British governments since then to shut down our productive base. More recently even the ruinous 20% target has been rejected by true believers as not ambitious enough and the goal now is for a “carbonless economy”.

The nitty-gritty of achieving the Climate Change Act goal is to close down all our cheap coal fired power stations and replace them with “free” energy from renewables. The ironic thing about the “free” energy from renewable sources is just how expensive it is. This is one reason why Tata in Britain pays almost twice as much as German steelmakers for electricity. The other reason is that though the Germans are if anything nuttier than we are about renewables (they’ve spent more than €100bn on solar panels!) they prefer the extra costs to be borne by freezing grannies and provide substantially cheaper energy to their industry.

Okay, I hear you say, we all know about the Left selling its soul to Big Climate, but why would David Cameron’s Conservatives go along with it?

First as a marketing man by profession Cameron’s first priority on taking his current job was the Conservative brand. Teresa May’s judgment that the Conservatives were viewed as the “nasty” party struck a chord because it was the plain truth . After decades of pummelling from Britain’s most trusted media sources the Conservatives were seen as heartless self-seekers even by voters who agreed with them. Cameron almost certainly made the calculation that if you can’t beat them, you’ve got to join them. That’s why he voted with Labour for Miliband’s suicidal Climate Act. And that’s why he vowed to make his government the greenest ever. And that’s why he’s kept the promise.

But cynical calculation aside it also has to said that Cameron was never much of a conservative in the first place except perhaps in a tribal sense. This is not to single him out for opprobrium. Most Conservatives these days are not very conservative. The Left’s dominance of education, the media and our culture generally has shifted the whole population far to the left. And even a glance at newspapers such as the Daily Mail or the “Torygraph” shows that even right-wingers now have a progressive outlook on the world. And issues such as gay marriage, transgender, and feminist whining which were on the extreme fringe a few decades ago are now popular. And whilst closing down the steel industry is not exactly popular, it is regarded as acceptable and inevitable in the progressive mindset.

Acceptable because those factories and steelworks are so last century. The progressive mind instinctively rejects any idea that suggests a return to a halcyon past. And what could be more reactionary than attempting an industrial renaissance. And inevitable because our heavy industry is supposed to be hopelessly uneconomic and unable to survive without massive subsidies.

That’s why progressives can look upon the destruction of our industry with such equanimity though also perhaps tinged with a little sadness and sentimentality. The progressive instinct is always to reject the past and embrace novelty.

On a more general point a useful rule of thumb for progressives’ view about something is how novel it is. Here’s a few examples from the top of my head. Progressive feminists: one sexual assault by a white guy is proof of our “rape culture”, but mass sexual assaults in Cologne are nothing to worry about. Progressives at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds: stealing one peregrine falcon egg deserves a stiff prison term, but wind turbines chopping up peregrine falcons by the dozen is merely collateral damage. Progressive EU commissioners: using mercury in thermometers and barometers is highly toxic and must be banned, but aren’t these new mercury using eco bulbs wonderful? Progressive bunny huggers: animal cruelty shames us all! But Halal slaughter is fine and dandy. And, of course, subsidising our steel industry doesn’t make economic sense, but 25% tax breaks for TV production, animation and film is investing in the future.

Proof of this irrational bias against our traditional industries comes most clearly in the fact that sky-high energy prices are not the only burden that the government has loaded the steel industry with.

There’s also the related carbon tax of £18 a tonne that our biggest competitors don’t have to pay.

There’s the fact that business rates for steel plants in Britain are calculated in a different way from our competitors which results in their paying between five and seven times as much.

Then there’s the fact that the British government fails to look favourably upon local suppliers for infrastructure projects; a policy that is all but automatic for our European partners. 

And finally there’s the coup-de-grace in the form of our government blocking EU tariffs against the dumping of Chinese steel. The Americans swiftly reacted to the danger to their market by imposing tariffs of up to 500%. The EU only managed a tariff of 13% thanks to Britain’s intervention. The reason for this last and fatal betrayal apparently was to keep the Chinese sweet. The result has been a halving of steel prices in Europe.

After all of that the steel industry collapsed. How could it not?

The British steel industry didn’t collapse because it is uneconomic and doomed in today’s world. If that were the case the hard-headed businessmen on the Tata board never would have bought it in the first place or sunk £2bn into it. When Tata paid £4.3bn for Corus in 2006 you can bet your life they only did so after the most careful consideration of the prospects for the business. The only factor they didn’t foresee in their projections was that the British government would betray British national interest and deliberately kill off a strategic industry. Indeed what sane person could imagine they would ever do that? But, of course, they are not sane, they are progressives.

Then when the story broke David Cameron told brazen lies about Britain not being behind blocking EU tariffs and pretended that he supported the British steel industry when his government’s record as outlined above shows this couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact steel industry representatives have been desperately warning of the certain result of the above burdens for years and have been met with utter indifference.

And then nothing. The story died. Britain’s journalists fell silent just when the story was getting interesting and turned with passion and delight to a tax avoidance non-story, just when David Cameron’s mendacity and betrayal of the steel industry could have been exposed for all to see.

I guess they agree with Cameron that the demise of our manufacturing base is sad but inevitable.

I guess they agree that highly skilled and well-paid workers becoming burger flippers is a positive economic development.

I guess they agree that our creative industries and the banks will somehow plug our £200bn trade deficit.

      

I guess like Cameron they are good progressives.

      

In case you're wondering how long this idiocy can go on, don't hold your breath. Progressive destruction is coming to a town near you very soon.