Future of Steel - Ken Clarke & Paul Mason - BBC Newsnight

Chancellor of the Exchequer Kenneth Clarke and Paul Mason, the economics journalist discuss the future of the steel industry in the UK.

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[HelloDaves]

I love driving passed Port Talbot and admiring the industrial beauty of the steel works lit up at night. It's like being in the opening scene of Blade Runner.

[dan]

nice to see Paul Mason back on Newsnight

[newportmeister]

Excellent stuff from a now unfettered Paul Mason.

[routeman]

Ken Clarke? When he was in the 1990s Conservative government, he was on a political panel show. As an example of a successful industry, he cited "the steelworks at Consett". But it had been closed in 1980. As a chancellor, he had no idea why economic recession and recovery happened, but he took no blame for recessions and all credit for recoveries.

[peteradaniel]

How strange, Paul Mason on Newsnight as a guest!

[foppo]

Paul Mason should have had the news night job.Maybe to honest and forthright in his opinions he might have scared a few politicians.Everything is to controlled on the news a shame.

[importedmusic]

If its not making money I don't want MY tax money paying for it.

[Lanzylee]

Ken : I often drive past it ... Kirsty drive past it yeh, , Classic lol

[Graham]

China has tariffs on us but god forbid we even think about putting tariffs on them.

[curtiscarpenter]

The thing is you need a long term approach, a measured approach, a broader approach, for this thing to work. Understand how unique the risk is now and why to pitch investment for money to go into growth, moving toward India and china is a must for steel. Most of all China makes 101 times the amount of steel we do.

[allancarey]

"We must support communities that have a chance of success" or something to that effect. What happens to those communities that are crumbling due to incompetence at a management level? The policies of this government are sickening, he almost admires the fact that the Chinese willingly axe millions of jobs with a single strike. A slogan like "Get rid of the poor and Great Britain shall rise again" would be extremely fitting to this incarnation of the Tory party

[mc]

but they can pile a million pounds an hour into the the EU? £168, 000, 000 a week? net. The Solution is to build a new Steel Plant initially for the internal market and stop importing it instead of flogging a dead horse.

[IanHolton]

Well said Paul Mason. Tories caused this failure

[cfhussain]

Ken Clarke says "We can't enter a tariff war", and then China increases tariffs. Ken Clarke, in his defence of George Osbourne's Omnishambles 2.0 budget and his comments on Port Talbot, is completely out of touch with large swathes of opinion. On the plus side, like David Cameron he exudes confidence and appears to believe what he says. Unfortunately, policy is what matters, not well tuned speeches and answers. And we are running out of time to save the steel industry, that is the reality.

[sjlees]

the tory govt has failed on this I'm afraid, i know is a tough situation but the sectary for this dept has epically failed

[Iggytommy]

trust me, one only ever wants to travel past Port Talbot. :p

on a serious note, we need to keep a national steel industry. nationalise it if necessary. exit the EU and increase steel import tariffs.