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traceroute66 1 hours ago [-]
This reminded me of an article in The Economist published last year, April 2025:
"Zombie politics: how Dead Man dominates British politics"[1]
Two prescient paragraphs related to today's news:
If British politicians worship voters who are no longer among the living, it is natural that they do the same to a version of the British economy that has long departed. “There are people in this country who love to talk down our manufacturing,” said Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, while speaking in Jaguar Land Rover’s (JLR) factory in Birmingham. During the 1970s, one in four people worked in manufacturing, like Sir Keir’s dad, who died in 2018. Now fewer than one in ten do.
Manufacturing, a small part of the economy, plays a big role in politics everywhere. Britain is no exception. A speech at a JLR plant has become a rite of passage for any leading politician in recent years. Dead Man’s old job comes first for Britain’s politicos. The lives of workers in Britain’s services economy come second. True, manufacturing’s weak performance after the financial crisis is one reason for Britain’s woeful productivity growth. Yet politicians cling on to a primitive vision of it. “He made things with his hands,” said Sir Keir of his father. That modern manufacturing requires oodles of educated workers is ignored. Living graduates play little role in political discourse beyond politicians moaning that there are too many of them. After all, Dead Man did not attend university. Why should his grandchildren bother?
what a bizarre article, completely disconnected from reality. in what world is manufacturing, a sector that has been neglected for decades at this point, having any sway on politics in Britain.
why does The Economist have so much disdain of manufacturing and people who work in it? look at China, look at their manufacturing industry and what they are able to do with it. then look at the UK, who is struggling to build Hinkley Point C, or HS2 (projected to be the most expensive high-speed rail in the world btw). The Economist is an absolute f*ing joke.
gruez 6 minutes ago [-]
>in what world is manufacturing, a sector that has been neglected for decades at this point, having any sway on politics in Britain.
Are you confusing the lack of effective interventions with "neglect"? Nearly every administration in the past decade had some sort of an industrial policy, but even though they failed to bring manufacturing back to britain, that doesn't mean "neglect". It just means the forces of globalization is too strong.
pjc50 10 minutes ago [-]
The point is that manufacturing is a relatively small part of both the economy and the job market; AND the popular view of manufacturing (large plant staffed by a large number of men being the dominant employer of a nearby town or city) doesn't look anything like the reality of modern manufacturing (small run boutique high value stuff like satellites and turbines, highly automated and professionalized, relatively small number of employees).
This leads to stupid decisions like gutting the university sector, which is a major export industry.
Thousands of university job cuts in humanities and social sciences are creating widespread cold spots for languages, classics and theology degrees, the British Academy has warned.
[...]
The subjects with the biggest staff cuts were social work (-9%), English and classics (both -8%), anthropology (-7%) and linguistics (-6%).
traceroute66 7 minutes ago [-]
> look at China, look at their manufacturing industry and what they are able to do with it.
"look at China" what ? Have you seen the population size of China ? Have you seen the geographic size of China ?
Remember what is often said when Mr Trump talks about bringing tech manufacturing back to the US ....
Yes great idea Mr Trump. But even with the most generously optimistic figures, due to the lack of available workforce and space the US could only ever provide the capacity equivalent to one Chinese manufacturing town of which the Chinese have dozens.
pjc50 4 minutes ago [-]
> Have you seen the population size of China ? Have you seen the geographic size of China ?
British thinking seems to be that because we won the Opium War we should just expect a country with 20 times our population and a vast land area to be poorer, both per capita and in total, than our island, forever.
flir 23 minutes ago [-]
Fishing holds similar role in the UK and France (at least). Tiny components of the overall economy, giant patriotic feels.
I still think some manufacturing is simply strategic, and you should maintain a capability even at a (financial) loss though.
traceroute66 19 minutes ago [-]
> Fishing holds similar role in the UK
Indeed and ironically most British people refuse to eat the species commonly found in UK waters, e.g. mackerel etc.
Because the Brits are so fussy, most fish eaten in the UK has always been imported, e.g. Icelandic cod.
And the fact the UK fishermen were die-hard pro-Brexit is odd given they should have been aware that the majority of their regular catch was sold to EU buyers.
flir 15 minutes ago [-]
> most fish eaten in the UK has always been imported, e.g. Icelandic cod.
Not always (Cod Wars). And our herring catch was once its own industry.
> And the fact the UK fishermen were die-hard pro-Brexit is odd given they should have been aware that the majority of their regular catch was sold to EU buyers.
They thought they'd have a monopoly on those fishing grounds post-Brexit.
nephihaha 9 minutes ago [-]
The problem for them wasn't the sales, it was the catches. The EU was good for farmers, not so good for fisheries. The EU fishing rules meant multiple countries could fish the same grounds meaning overfishing. The UK was much stricter on net sizes than Spain was.
georgeecollins 17 minutes ago [-]
In the US that's farming. The "family farm" which is rare ends up being the justification for tons of agribusiness subsidies.
The good news is the USA produces lots of food.
nephihaha 11 minutes ago [-]
That is because fishing has multiple other factors. For one, it is a major component of certain towns and villages, so while it isn't important to big cities, it is on the smaller scale in particular areas. It keeps harbours open and is also a draw for tourists, so I would say it has different implications than, say, shoe manufacturing.
The British chocolate industry was a major employer in some places but has been decimated. British chocolate was certainly not the best in the world but it was better than what it has been turned into in the last few years, thanks to palm oil, international take overs etc.
derektank 54 minutes ago [-]
It’s only possible for Dead Man valorizing politicians to be elected because much of the electorate worships the same. They all have parents too, naturally.
traceroute66 46 minutes ago [-]
> much of the electorate worships the same. They all have parents too, naturally.
Well, yes. But not many of them worship the generation who were mostly responsible for voting in favour of Brexit (60% support among those aged 65 and over at the time of the vote).
0x3f 21 minutes ago [-]
I think they do, actually. They just have a disconnect about it. But e.g. removing the triple lock is unpopular not just among those of an age to be affected by it.
pjc50 9 minutes ago [-]
The triple lock actually benefits everyone not currently retired, just .. not until they actually retire.
raverbashing 56 minutes ago [-]
This sounds good until you run out of steel and out of sellers as well
mr_toad 51 minutes ago [-]
Half of all steel in the UK is imported anyway, and there are many places to obtain it. Unless the UK goes to war with most of the world at the same time, it’s not going to have trouble getting steel.
pydry 34 minutes ago [-]
If there is a large war, those countries will prioritize domestic consumption and the UK will immediately stop being able to produce weapons.
Domestic steel production is an essential element of being sovereign, as opposed to being the handpuppet of a larger power (like the US).
pjc50 13 minutes ago [-]
Now check where the inputs to steel production come from.
The UK built a lot of refining to use local iron ore and coal deposits. It used those deposits. They are now substantially used up. Subsurface mining is uneconomic, and open mining is politically unthinkable.
Lots of discussion of moving to EAF/DRI from traditional blast furnaces.
timcobb 4 minutes ago [-]
When there's a war and you need sovereignty how would open mining be unthinkable
0x3f 23 minutes ago [-]
> If there is a large war, those countries will prioritize domestic consumption and the UK will immediately stop being able to produce weapons.
Same with the iron we'd need to make our own steel.
And a current glut just makes it even cheaper for us to stockpile, vs spending on votes by propping up a failing industry.
georgeecollins 8 minutes ago [-]
Really? There is a large war going on right now and the key material is chips. Drone don't use a lot of steel, neither do missiles or modern airplanes.
Yes you need artillery and particularly shells. But you are so much more limited by the capacity of your munition factories that how much steel you have would not be an issue. One of the main things you would need for a new munitions factory is trained workers.
The World Wars were wars of mass mobilization and industrial capacity. People went into the first thinking cavalry was important, the second thinking battleships still mattered. My point is I have no idea what the next great war might be like, but thinking the winner will be who chugs out the most tanks in five years may be looking in the rear view mirror.
timcobb 4 minutes ago [-]
Drones are only part of the equation you need to be able to forge things
RandomLensman 23 minutes ago [-]
I don't see how the UK could generally be self-sufficient in any large war.
nradov 11 minutes ago [-]
It certainly wasn't self-sufficient in the last two large wars.
jmyeet 5 minutes ago [-]
The Economist is a neoliberal dish rag.
There is a completely made up number that is an increasingly large portion of GDP in OECD nations and that number is imputed rent [1]. This is a fictional number that owner-occupiers "pay" themselves to live in their own houses. So as housing prices go up, so does imputed rent. House prices have increasingly become the best vehicle for investment funds because the returns are esentially protected. But none of that produces anything.
The UK in particular has been described as buy-to-let economy.
It doesn't have to be this way. If you limit property speculation then capital will find something else productive to do, like manufacturing. Dish rags like The Economist present it as inevitable that Western nations become financialized. It's simply not true. Look at Germany. Also look at the fact that Germany greatly limits the collaterialization and speculation on property. That's not an accident.
It's probably not a bad idea. Steel is one of the things that an industrialized country needs to produce to protect its own sovereignty. Letting it shut down and just hope you'll always be able to import enough steel from other countries is a bad long-term strategy. You'd be left unable to fend for yourself.
jarym 46 minutes ago [-]
Yep, same can be said of manufacturing capability in general. If you don't have a manufacturing base then inevitably when there's a war you may find yourself unable to build defense components.
0x3f 56 minutes ago [-]
You can make this same argument about a great number of things. Why is steel any more critical than food or vaccines or the like? Indeed we got caught short of vaccines recently, and had some nontrivial consideration of running a military op against NATO member over it.
matt727 47 minutes ago [-]
The food example, is the exact reason for large farming subsidies in the European Union. These were implemented as a founding initiative, due to the experience of food shortages during the second world war.
A great number of things could be considered critical. Due to the nature of when access could be cut off, the main thing countries likely worry about being able to access, is things humans need to stay alive, and things needed to wage war.
0x3f 39 minutes ago [-]
Farming subsidies are one of the most criticized parts of the EU. My comment isn't in support of it. But even so, subsidy is quite different from compulsory purchase. The question is: why is steel special. Not in a no-action-vs-some-action way, but why so aggressive?
Ironically I think it's the same for both steel and farmers: they provide votes.
XorNot 9 minutes ago [-]
Because like, every basic war machine is made from it? Like how is this a question?
There's been two world wars and access to or stockpiling of steel has been a critical strategic factor in both.
Most consumable military assets are made from steel, for example and it underpins most machine tools and factory components as well.
remus 23 minutes ago [-]
Obviously there are a lot of important things you need to keep a country running, but steel is a key input a in a huge number of very important sectors (infrastructure, military, automotive etc.) so having some ability to produce your own steel seems a sensible hedge.
Deukhoofd 52 minutes ago [-]
Food tends to be a lot easier to produce, and many countries do often subsidize their food production, as well as have mercantilistic policies to ensure food production is kept locally.
Vaccines is a more interesting one, and would be something that might indeed be of interest to a nation. On the other hand I don't think many governments are that concerned about another pandemic, sometimes the discourse regarding it very much sounds like "what are the odds it'll happen again"
0x3f 43 minutes ago [-]
I don't really care for farm subsidies either, but even ignoring that: it's quite a different level of intervention than compulsory purchase. Same with the vaccines. We didn't respond to that crisis by nationalizing AstraZeneca.
My rhetorical point is just that steel gets special treatment probably because it's politically expedient. There are large, politically-relevant parts of the country that are still emotionally tied to the idea that we're an industrial nation. People under the age of 30 still go on about Thatcher and the miners.
There's no real shortage of steel around the world that I know of. We could just stockpile it instead, for example. And in the hypothetical tail-risk scenario this is all supposed to insure against... how do we even get the raw materials for making steel anyway?
XorNot 4 minutes ago [-]
Vaccines aren't something you need urgently in a crisis.
A wartime effort has to keep supplies moving daily, or the front collapses.
Whereas the need for vaccines is heavily deferred - your population is already vaccinated in peacetime, and you are unlikely to need to make a novel vaccine over the course of a war, nor vaccinate new population during one either: that large vaccinated population providing herd immunity gives you a lot of runway for children with less access.
1970-01-01 46 minutes ago [-]
Steel comes from iron, which you can't grow. It's more critical than food, which you can grow. Same for vaccines.
0x3f 42 minutes ago [-]
> Steel comes from iron, which you can't grow
Right, and where is the iron coming from in the scenario where we can't import steel?
1970-01-01 35 minutes ago [-]
As it is top-critical, you're recycling it, opening new mines, and taking it by force.
0x3f 32 minutes ago [-]
Don't most of these contingencies apply to steel in the first place?
1970-01-01 17 minutes ago [-]
Nope. The entire point here is facing the decision on which of these contingencies will apply.
0x3f 10 minutes ago [-]
Why can't steel be recycled or taken by force?
cucumber3732842 9 minutes ago [-]
>Why is steel any more critical than food or vaccines or the like?
Countries that import large shares of their food and medical supply chains are constantly trying to develop domestic capacity.
msuniverse2026 1 hours ago [-]
Interesting how they haven't repeated in this article earlier claims that the Chinese purchase of the steelworks was a strategic move to slowly destroy the blast furnaces by letting them cool under pretext of low demand.
catigula 57 minutes ago [-]
The state intervened to stop the Chinese from sabotaging their furnaces. Seems like an open and shut case unless you have 5 eyes intelligence sources.
intheitmines 39 minutes ago [-]
See also Chinese companies buying UK private schools and closing them down
Mike Parker, the school’s director of marketing, wrote on LinkedIn: “Whatever you read, this isn’t a VAT story. It isn’t a ‘falling rolls, unstoppable decline’ story. The truth is deeper and more complex and, eventually, the truth will out.”
jingpostmedia 45 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
mr_toad 55 minutes ago [-]
The government is forced to sell steel at a loss, because all the buyers for whom this is a such a vital supply would otherwise buy cheaper imported steel, every single one of them.
And ultimately all the ore and coke used to make the steel are imported anyway.
jarym 43 minutes ago [-]
2 things:
a) Government plays a part in the cost of things - especially years of mis-investment around energy generation has sent British prices to the stratosphere and employment taxation levels greater than those 'cheaper' producers.
b) The 'cheaper' producers are still _producers_ and thus have control - if they need to hoard their own supply they will, or if they need to leverage it for some political gain they might.
p_l 52 minutes ago [-]
Until something happens that disrupts the supply chains from abroad and suddenly there's an issue
patall 42 minutes ago [-]
The same is, as far as I can grasp it, true for butter, bread, milk and eggs. Only there, it is already established.
rsynnott 14 minutes ago [-]
What, again?
(British Steel's predecessor was itself a nationalisation effort in the 60s.)
patall 44 minutes ago [-]
I assume, ultimately western nations will have to adopt what already exists for agricultural goods for production as well. I am afraid it will end as a per-worker subsidy analog to per-area-of-land for lack of a better metric but in the end, that is what will be necessary if one wants to keep any industrial capabilities.
carterschonwald 45 minutes ago [-]
one of the most hilarious examples of how the current wh admins false protectionism, in my mind, is the crucible steel bankruptcy in jan/feb 2025.
its a technological tragedy because it was the only facility im aware of globally that could actually manufacture steel based carbide alternatives at commercial volumes. idk if the relevant equipment is being operated by anyone post bankruptcy. powder steel equipment is a bit less destroyed when turned off, but i think the key blocker is that heat cycling a 3k centigrade furnace will age the material and cause cracking thatmakes it hard to resume the powederization flows
zmmmmm 41 minutes ago [-]
One more tiny piece of the global system of international order falling apart.
There was a time when people would have felt safe enough to rely on the multiplicity of strongly allied nations with steel production capability. Now that is not considered safe. Now steel production has to be protected because nations that were previously considered reliable strategic partners no longer are behaving that way.
It will happen slowly but piece by piece things will move and we will all pay a cost for it.
petcat 11 minutes ago [-]
> There was a time when people would have felt safe enough to rely on the multiplicity of strongly allied nations with steel production capability. [...] nations that were previously considered reliable strategic partners no longer are behaving that way.
Is this supposed to be referring to the US? Because as far as I know USA has never really exported much steel to the UK at all. It's an importer of British steel.
Maybe it's referring to European allies? Or South Korea?
wewewedxfgdf 1 hours ago [-]
Pretty sure there's more than enough in Australia.
Cthulhu_ 1 hours ago [-]
Iron ore yes, smelting capacity, don't know, but it's literally on the other side of the world.
bell-cot 42 minutes ago [-]
One can argue whether, in abstract, this was a good idea.
Back in the real world - any government or large org can do a genuinely good thing so badly that it would have been better if they'd done nothing at all.
And it's been many a decade since the British gov't had much of a reputation for competence.
ExoticPearTree 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
dabeeeenster 1 hours ago [-]
Yes, because government run institutions like the Army and the NHS don't work, do they?
petcat 1 hours ago [-]
Aren't NHS medical workers in a constant state of protest over low wages and bad working conditions? I know the doctor/nurse brain drain from Canada and the UK to the US used to be really bad. I haven't seen what the statistics are recently.
Honestly, a lot of it is related to pretty obvious attempts at dismantling the NHS by Westminster
0x3f 32 minutes ago [-]
Are they seeding it with incompetent middle management as a psy-op?
0x3f 1 hours ago [-]
Is there even a definition of "doesn't work" that exists for you with the NHS? How inefficient and ineffective does it have to be before it's considered "not working"? Because, technically, every healthcare system on the planet has some effect.
Same for the army.
fidotron 1 hours ago [-]
Neither of those are beacons of either efficiency or performing to standard. In fact both are chronically mismanaged.
You'd actually struggle to pick worse examples.
Cthulhu_ 1 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure what argument you're trying to make here, can you elaborate?
watwut 1 hours ago [-]
This bonmot sounded cool and fun years ago, but not anymore. It is actually OK and desirable for governments to help, to organize and to lead toward positive outcome. Governments should do more then just pay military, prisons and police.
Deliberate destruction and expectation of nothing positive from the governments already caused enough damage.
philipallstar 1 hours ago [-]
It never sounded cool and fun. It was government acknowledging its own limitations. Governments don't perform better if we all cheer them on. Right now a government (Russia's) is waging war on a country. Last century governments caused untold death in socialist countries (Venezuela, China, USSR) because they were trying to organise centrally.
amanaplanacanal 49 minutes ago [-]
As a counter example, a government (Ukraine) is defending against the Russian invasion and is looking more and more like it might win that fight. Would they be better off without a government?
fragmede 1 hours ago [-]
Then again, the British East India Company committed plenty of atrocities as a corporation, so if we're going to oversimplify to government bad, it seems corporations bad too. Don't get me started on religious either!
tempfile 1 hours ago [-]
In the spirit of fairness I have to note the untold deaths caused by non-socialist countries in Cambodia, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, pretty much every country in South America...
squigz 1 hours ago [-]
Or even Western nations like America and Canada? How many people die every year from preventable causes? To exposure? To suicide?
soco 57 minutes ago [-]
Last century non-socialist governments caused untold deaths in many Western countries, starting with Germany for a better known example, but the entire list is quite long. So could it be that it wasn't socialism the problem?
watwut 1 hours ago [-]
> It was government acknowledging its own limitations
No it was not. It was deliberately trying to make government sound as useless as possible, so that its useful programs can be dismantled.
You are ignoring all good things that came out of governments. That is also deliberate choice. If Ukraine government fell, they would be Russians now. Last century, we have see a lot of good coming out of governments - starting with new deal, human rights, historically unprecedented period of peace in Europe and prosperity. Science, education, healthcare all work better when governments work well.
lenerdenator 1 hours ago [-]
And now we've overcorrected and have people dying from a lack of government care.
It was indeed meant to sound "cool and fun". It was supposed to be a memorable slogan. That's why Reagan used it. Then people made it into a battle cry for letting the hyper-wealthy dismantle regulations that were often written in blood, or for explaining why we need to let people go into bankruptcy from medical bills.
Having some centralized/public ownership of some enterprises doesn't necessarily mean that the government is going to purge people or starve tens of millions.
functionmouse 1 hours ago [-]
"I drank the kool-aid and I am very smart."
fidotron 1 hours ago [-]
Tangent: disturbing to see the BBC thinking they're going to get far by paywalling quasi-randomly in North America. At least right now it's trivial to ignore.
flohofwoe 1 hours ago [-]
Tangent: disturbing to see many North American news sites thinking they're going to get far by region-blocking European visitors because they don't want to be GDPR compliant ;)
Closi 1 hours ago [-]
Disturbing? In what sense? Other news sources are paywalled and UK citizens have to pay in tax.
graemep 1 hours ago [-]
The annoying thing about the BBC paywall is that it is implemented by using different domains, so (for example here) people in the UK go to bbc.com instead of bbc.co.uk
tikkabhuna 12 minutes ago [-]
Do you have that the wrong way round? In the UK, you go to bbc.co.uk (and bbc.com redirects to bbc.co.uk). From memory, in the US you get pushed to bbc.com.
graemep 5 minutes ago [-]
I mean that, for example the link here is to bbc.com, and it does not recirect me to bbc.co.uk
UnfitFootprint 1 hours ago [-]
Wait what? Is the NYT not paywalled somewhere?
Arainach 1 hours ago [-]
I'm not seeing this particular paywall, but disturbing in that the BBC is so awful and stupid at this, presumably.
For many years I would have gladly paid the BBC $20/mo for some way to legally watch Top Gear and Doctor Who. That's it, just two shows and I'll give you more than I give Netflix. They never offered a single legal mechanism available to US citizens, so, well.....don't admit to crimes on the internet and all that.
mrkwse 1 hours ago [-]
It was offered much later than iPlayer was for the UK, but to claim they 'never' had an option for US audiences is false when they have had Britbox for almost 10 years
Arainach 1 hours ago [-]
Not only was Britbox launched long after iPlayer and after I stopped watching both of the shows I mentioned (in fact, Top Gear in its 2002 incarnation was functionally off the air before Britbox launched), but the BBC sold their streaming rights to those two programs such that their modern incarnations were never, so far as I'm aware, available on Britbox.
Steve16384 1 hours ago [-]
Have you tried BritBox? It seems to show Doctor Who, but ironically, being in the UK I'm unable to access their site to see specific details.
potatoproduct 1 hours ago [-]
An increasing proportion of UK citizens are deciding not to pay for a TV licence that funds the BBC as consumption patterns have changed.
The BBC will be a zombie in 10 years unless they stop being emotionally driven and sort out their funding.
inigyou 1 hours ago [-]
Good. The BBC is no longer the shining beacon of objective reporting it once was. Let it die and be replaced by something better.
GJim 1 hours ago [-]
Presumably you get your news content from Rupert Murdoch, the Daily Mail and UK News?
n4r9 47 minutes ago [-]
For what it's worth, I stopped paying the license fee because of how the BBC sucked up to the Tories in the lead up to the 2019 GE. From Newsnight displaying images of Corbyn that made him look like a Soviet stooge, to Laura Kuenssberg leaking postal vote ballot information, to Alex Forsyth saying that Boris Johnson "deserves" the election.
People say that it's subject to complaints of bias from both sides of the spectrum, but I've yet to see comparable concrete pro-left examples.
gib444 34 minutes ago [-]
> how the BBC sucked up to the Tories in the lead up to the 2019 GE
> Laura Kuenssberg
ughh yes so glad that era is behind us. Good riddance.
pjc50 6 minutes ago [-]
I don't know whether this is a joke or not, because she's still there.
gib444 4 minutes ago [-]
[delayed]
badgersnake 1 hours ago [-]
If everybody thinks you’re biased, you’re probably not biased at all.
inigyou 47 minutes ago [-]
Look at how the BBC reports on the Middle East and tell me you agree with it.
philipallstar 1 hours ago [-]
> In March, the National Audit Office released a report noting that the Scunthorpe steelworks was costing the government about £1.3m a day.
No, BBC, the government doesn't have money. It costs the net taxpayer that much a day.
KaiserPro 55 minutes ago [-]
When I buy something, it doesn't cost my employer, it costs me.
the pedantry here isn't helpful, as its "not other peoples money" is a monetary system that the government lets us use.
I understand that frustration about frivolous spending. It would be better if the argument was on how we evolve and change the steel market here in the UK so its self funding.
BUT!
the whole discourse about "government shouldn't choose winners" is a bit flawed, because we have left it to business to invest in infra, and mostly they've just outsourced to someone else (who's government actually planned with an industrial strategy)
p_l 53 minutes ago [-]
GBP is a fiat currency issued by government through government spending and destroyed by government through taxation, it does not cost the taxpayer it's at worst a bad allocation of resources or incentivization of resource allocation.
"Zombie politics: how Dead Man dominates British politics"[1]
Two prescient paragraphs related to today's news:
[1] https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/04/09/zombie-politics...why does The Economist have so much disdain of manufacturing and people who work in it? look at China, look at their manufacturing industry and what they are able to do with it. then look at the UK, who is struggling to build Hinkley Point C, or HS2 (projected to be the most expensive high-speed rail in the world btw). The Economist is an absolute f*ing joke.
Are you confusing the lack of effective interventions with "neglect"? Nearly every administration in the past decade had some sort of an industrial policy, but even though they failed to bring manufacturing back to britain, that doesn't mean "neglect". It just means the forces of globalization is too strong.
This leads to stupid decisions like gutting the university sector, which is a major export industry.
Thousands of university job cuts in humanities and social sciences are creating widespread cold spots for languages, classics and theology degrees, the British Academy has warned.
[...]
The subjects with the biggest staff cuts were social work (-9%), English and classics (both -8%), anthropology (-7%) and linguistics (-6%).
"look at China" what ? Have you seen the population size of China ? Have you seen the geographic size of China ?
Remember what is often said when Mr Trump talks about bringing tech manufacturing back to the US ....
Yes great idea Mr Trump. But even with the most generously optimistic figures, due to the lack of available workforce and space the US could only ever provide the capacity equivalent to one Chinese manufacturing town of which the Chinese have dozens.
British thinking seems to be that because we won the Opium War we should just expect a country with 20 times our population and a vast land area to be poorer, both per capita and in total, than our island, forever.
I still think some manufacturing is simply strategic, and you should maintain a capability even at a (financial) loss though.
Indeed and ironically most British people refuse to eat the species commonly found in UK waters, e.g. mackerel etc.
Because the Brits are so fussy, most fish eaten in the UK has always been imported, e.g. Icelandic cod.
And the fact the UK fishermen were die-hard pro-Brexit is odd given they should have been aware that the majority of their regular catch was sold to EU buyers.
Not always (Cod Wars). And our herring catch was once its own industry.
> And the fact the UK fishermen were die-hard pro-Brexit is odd given they should have been aware that the majority of their regular catch was sold to EU buyers.
They thought they'd have a monopoly on those fishing grounds post-Brexit.
The good news is the USA produces lots of food.
The British chocolate industry was a major employer in some places but has been decimated. British chocolate was certainly not the best in the world but it was better than what it has been turned into in the last few years, thanks to palm oil, international take overs etc.
Well, yes. But not many of them worship the generation who were mostly responsible for voting in favour of Brexit (60% support among those aged 65 and over at the time of the vote).
Domestic steel production is an essential element of being sovereign, as opposed to being the handpuppet of a larger power (like the US).
The UK built a lot of refining to use local iron ore and coal deposits. It used those deposits. They are now substantially used up. Subsurface mining is uneconomic, and open mining is politically unthinkable.
There is actually a really high quality government review of the whole subject: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/690b868714b04...
Lots of discussion of moving to EAF/DRI from traditional blast furnaces.
Same with the iron we'd need to make our own steel.
And a current glut just makes it even cheaper for us to stockpile, vs spending on votes by propping up a failing industry.
Yes you need artillery and particularly shells. But you are so much more limited by the capacity of your munition factories that how much steel you have would not be an issue. One of the main things you would need for a new munitions factory is trained workers.
The World Wars were wars of mass mobilization and industrial capacity. People went into the first thinking cavalry was important, the second thinking battleships still mattered. My point is I have no idea what the next great war might be like, but thinking the winner will be who chugs out the most tanks in five years may be looking in the rear view mirror.
There is a completely made up number that is an increasingly large portion of GDP in OECD nations and that number is imputed rent [1]. This is a fictional number that owner-occupiers "pay" themselves to live in their own houses. So as housing prices go up, so does imputed rent. House prices have increasingly become the best vehicle for investment funds because the returns are esentially protected. But none of that produces anything.
The UK in particular has been described as buy-to-let economy.
It doesn't have to be this way. If you limit property speculation then capital will find something else productive to do, like manufacturing. Dish rags like The Economist present it as inevitable that Western nations become financialized. It's simply not true. Look at Germany. Also look at the fact that Germany greatly limits the collaterialization and speculation on property. That's not an accident.
[1]: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2023/02/14/10-or-gdp-is-...
Ironically I think it's the same for both steel and farmers: they provide votes.
There's been two world wars and access to or stockpiling of steel has been a critical strategic factor in both.
Most consumable military assets are made from steel, for example and it underpins most machine tools and factory components as well.
Vaccines is a more interesting one, and would be something that might indeed be of interest to a nation. On the other hand I don't think many governments are that concerned about another pandemic, sometimes the discourse regarding it very much sounds like "what are the odds it'll happen again"
My rhetorical point is just that steel gets special treatment probably because it's politically expedient. There are large, politically-relevant parts of the country that are still emotionally tied to the idea that we're an industrial nation. People under the age of 30 still go on about Thatcher and the miners.
There's no real shortage of steel around the world that I know of. We could just stockpile it instead, for example. And in the hypothetical tail-risk scenario this is all supposed to insure against... how do we even get the raw materials for making steel anyway?
A wartime effort has to keep supplies moving daily, or the front collapses.
Whereas the need for vaccines is heavily deferred - your population is already vaccinated in peacetime, and you are unlikely to need to make a novel vaccine over the course of a war, nor vaccinate new population during one either: that large vaccinated population providing herd immunity gives you a lot of runway for children with less access.
Right, and where is the iron coming from in the scenario where we can't import steel?
Countries that import large shares of their food and medical supply chains are constantly trying to develop domestic capacity.
Original: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/02/chinese-company-...
https://archive.is/dRQsB#selection-2155.4-2155.79
Choice quote from the article
And ultimately all the ore and coke used to make the steel are imported anyway.
(British Steel's predecessor was itself a nationalisation effort in the 60s.)
its a technological tragedy because it was the only facility im aware of globally that could actually manufacture steel based carbide alternatives at commercial volumes. idk if the relevant equipment is being operated by anyone post bankruptcy. powder steel equipment is a bit less destroyed when turned off, but i think the key blocker is that heat cycling a 3k centigrade furnace will age the material and cause cracking thatmakes it hard to resume the powederization flows
There was a time when people would have felt safe enough to rely on the multiplicity of strongly allied nations with steel production capability. Now that is not considered safe. Now steel production has to be protected because nations that were previously considered reliable strategic partners no longer are behaving that way.
It will happen slowly but piece by piece things will move and we will all pay a cost for it.
Is this supposed to be referring to the US? Because as far as I know USA has never really exported much steel to the UK at all. It's an importer of British steel.
Maybe it's referring to European allies? Or South Korea?
Back in the real world - any government or large org can do a genuinely good thing so badly that it would have been better if they'd done nothing at all.
And it's been many a decade since the British gov't had much of a reputation for competence.
[0] https://www.marketplace.org/story/2024/02/19/uk-nhs-doctor-s...
Same for the army.
You'd actually struggle to pick worse examples.
Deliberate destruction and expectation of nothing positive from the governments already caused enough damage.
No it was not. It was deliberately trying to make government sound as useless as possible, so that its useful programs can be dismantled.
You are ignoring all good things that came out of governments. That is also deliberate choice. If Ukraine government fell, they would be Russians now. Last century, we have see a lot of good coming out of governments - starting with new deal, human rights, historically unprecedented period of peace in Europe and prosperity. Science, education, healthcare all work better when governments work well.
It was indeed meant to sound "cool and fun". It was supposed to be a memorable slogan. That's why Reagan used it. Then people made it into a battle cry for letting the hyper-wealthy dismantle regulations that were often written in blood, or for explaining why we need to let people go into bankruptcy from medical bills.
Having some centralized/public ownership of some enterprises doesn't necessarily mean that the government is going to purge people or starve tens of millions.
For many years I would have gladly paid the BBC $20/mo for some way to legally watch Top Gear and Doctor Who. That's it, just two shows and I'll give you more than I give Netflix. They never offered a single legal mechanism available to US citizens, so, well.....don't admit to crimes on the internet and all that.
The BBC will be a zombie in 10 years unless they stop being emotionally driven and sort out their funding.
People say that it's subject to complaints of bias from both sides of the spectrum, but I've yet to see comparable concrete pro-left examples.
> Laura Kuenssberg
ughh yes so glad that era is behind us. Good riddance.
No, BBC, the government doesn't have money. It costs the net taxpayer that much a day.
the pedantry here isn't helpful, as its "not other peoples money" is a monetary system that the government lets us use.
I understand that frustration about frivolous spending. It would be better if the argument was on how we evolve and change the steel market here in the UK so its self funding.
BUT!
the whole discourse about "government shouldn't choose winners" is a bit flawed, because we have left it to business to invest in infra, and mostly they've just outsourced to someone else (who's government actually planned with an industrial strategy)