Last Saturday Starmer melodramatically recalled parliament - on a Saturday - in order to pass emergency legislation to allow his government to seize Scunthorpe's British Steel plant from its private Chinese owner, Jingye, and, apparently, "save" it!

    In the run up to this, was the also unprecedented call for "nationalisation of British Steel" from the Tories and Nigel Farage... those passionate anti-socialists who usually use the words "communism" and "nationalisation" inter-changeably and express their hatred for both!

    Today we're told that nationalisation in this case is not off the table, but not immediately on it, since Starmer says he is looking for a private partner... with several billion to invest, ha-ha-ha...

    The law was passed overwhelmingly, and in record time: by midnight Saturday, it had already received royal assent! And this, despite its implications for other private companies, since the government can do the same to them, among other radical powers thereby allowed, if it so desired!

    Then followed minute-by-minute media coverage of an iron ore and coal shipment, in a "race" to keep the blast furnaces "alive" - which they said might, or might not, reach the plant in time! Starmer himself and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds went in person to the docks to meet the ship...

A stage-managed "race" for salvation

So what on earth was really going on behind this hyped-up spectacle? After all, the Scunthorpe plant has been "about to die" at least 3 times since Thatcher privatised the British Steel Corporation in 1988, after cutting it to shreds, and nobody except the steel workers themselves, cared if it did.

    In fact Jingye had finally rescued it from near-death in 2020, after asset-stripper Greybull Capital, which had acquired it for just £1 from the Tata group in 2016, had put it into liquidation. Despite its poor state, Jingye paid £50m for it and set about investing, to try to turn it into a viable plant. However the furnaces (only 2 operational out of the original 4, all dating back to 1954!) needed replacing (not least because of their huge carbon footprint) and since Jingye has lately been losing £700,000 per day, partly due to the extortionate cost of energy, it would have needed government help to stay operational, let alone replace furnaces with electric arc technology.

    Certainly Jingye was hoping to do all this. It had just opened a new £10 million "rail hub" which has the capacity to hold 25,000 tonnes of rails, for its main customer, the nationalised Network Rail!

    However the subsidy needed - at least £2bn - was refused by the government. And this is where the whole story becomes rather murky, with all kinds of implied accusations against Jingye, which have their origins, undoubtedly, in the racist anti-Chinese prejudice which prevails among the ruling political class - but particularly among the Tory and Reform far-right.

    So for instance, reports circulated that Jingye was blackmailing the government by allowing the furnace to burn out - or was guilty of deliberate "industrial sabotage" so that it could sell (or rather "dump", say commentators) "Chinese steel" here instead. Never mind that most steel needed in Britain is already imported - and, chiefly from China!

    But strangest of all, is the fact that nobody reported one word spoken by Jingye bosses (who arrived at the plant on Saturday to find their way blocked by angry workers).

Anti-China racism re-vamped

Finally, a Financial Times article appeared this Wednesday, quoting CEO Zengwei An, who expressed Jingye's "understanding" for the emergency law passed by the government! And asked to have Jingye's rights respected, and to be involved in finding "a proper solution that ensures a bright future for British Steel"... This, when Jingye is actually under British government attack!

    In fact any future role for Jingye is highly unlikely, given the rising tone of anti-China hate speech from ignorant xenophobes like Tory MP lain Duncan Smith - who Labour's Reynolds is doing a good job of imitating.

    However it's still not entirely clear why Starmer has chosen io take over the plant. He says it has "strategic importance" and that British-sourced "virgin steel" might be needed for the defence industry. But iron ore and coking coal would still need to be imported, so this hardly holds as an argument for his intervention on grounds of security.

    So, was all of this - and it's quite a big deal - done purely for the sake of political approval from the far- right northern electorate in order to win back their votes? Maybe, indeed. After all, Starmer's political opportunism has already led him to support the slaughter in Gaza, deportations of refugees, attacks on pensioners, and on young workers and the disabled.

    Today a few thousand jobs may be temporarily "saved", but who knows where Starmer's lunge to the right will lead him next? This just underlines the need for the working class to build its own political party - not to seek votes, but to fight to control society's future, in the interests of all.