The government’s latest intervention in commerce is a masterclass in selective indignation. Ministers now threaten to block a £1.73 billion payout from Hugo Boss to British Steel’s owner, citing “national interest.
” This is the same state that cheered foreign takeovers of our critical industries for decades, then feigned surprise when the bills came due. We are witnessing a peculiar form of late-era declinism: the impulse to block capital flows but not to rebuild the industrial base that made us a nation worth protecting. The Victorians would have laughed at such hand-wringing.
They built steel. We simply argue about who owns the scrap.
