Since the government of Keir Starmer had to have an emergency, on Saturday, April 12, a law to take control of the Hauts-Fourneaux de Scanthorpe, which their Chinese owner Jingye threatened to liquidate, the British have arisen a fundamental question, which they have long avoided. Is it reasonable to have left critical national infrastructure depending on this point in foreign capital, especially Chinese, when the world is increasingly unstable and protectionist? The debate is also relaunched to the Labor Party, in power since July 2024, as with the Conservatives, on the strategy of the United Kingdom with regard to Beijing, while the industrial sovereignty of the country has long been neglected.
The two tutorials of Scanthorpe, in northern Lincolnshire, are the last of the country capable of producing primary steel, essential for the armament, construction or aeronautics industry. They belong to the British Steel company, ex-national-national, which has changed its perimeter and owner several times before being acquired in 2020 by Jingye. With the accelerated deindustrialisation of Thatcher's years, the United Kingdom, which was the first steel producer at the end of the 19th centurye century, has seen most of its highle-flanks Close, victims of an ultra-competitive international market and penalized by prohibitive energy prices. The country was only on the 8the European producer in 2023, behind Spain, France or Belgium, with 5.6 million tonnes of steel per year, against 1,019 million tonnes made in China.
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Source: Lemonde