Steel is of critical importance to Britain, and Andy Burnham’s Government, with a liking for state control, may feel it had little choice but to prop up Speciality Steel UK – once part of Sanjeev Gupta’s failed metals empire.

The South Yorkshire-based firm, which makes steel for the aerospace, defence and energy sectors, is vital to UK supply chains.

Labour’s commitment to British steel-making is commendable, but Government funds being used to prop up the sector are a huge drain on the Exchequer.

The National Wealth Fund is committed to injecting £2.5billion into steel-making in Britain. Whether this represents value for money for taxpayers is questionable.

The Government’s green obsession has seen steel-making at Port Talbot come to a crunching halt and British Steel at Scunthorpe fall into public hands.

It is worrying that Speciality Steel, which already deploys a ‘green’ blast furnace, is at a standstill and has failed to find a private sector buyer.

Global conditions have seen China flood markets with cheap steel. Donald Trump has erected tariff barriers around America’s native steel industry. 

It was hoped that some of the UK’s big infrastructure projects, such as HS2 and new nuclear plants at Hinkley in Somerset and Sizewell C in Suffolk, would provide a healthy domestic market for specialist steels.

There are real questions, however, as to whether shuttering traditional coking steel plants, which make virgin steel, and replacing them with greener electric arc furnaces is really the answer.

The implosion in British steel-making can be traced back to 2007 when listed Anglo-Dutch steel-maker Corus was sold to Tata Steel for £6.2billion. 

As good an investor as Tata has been, it fell out of love with steel-making and its command of the UK industry. 

Carbon taxes have piled on the agony and hard-earned taxpayer money has been flowing out of Speciality Steel at the rate of £3.5million a month since August last year. 

Potential buyers have fallen by the wayside, with Norwegian start-up Blastr the latest to call it a day.

Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds says taking the company under the Government’s wing will ‘keep options open’ while Prime Minister Burnham’s party engages with workers, industry and investors to determine the future of the company’s sites. 

The reality is that, without entrepreneurial leadership, the future of production looks doomed.

As critical as steel is to the nation’s security, one wonders if the National Wealth Fund would be better focusing on tech, pharma and creative industries – where the UK has competitive advantage.

A great shortcoming of the EU is the triumph of national over Brussels interests in financial services.

The EU has some 17 biggish banks, but none have been able to compete on the global stage with the likes of JP Morgan, Bank of America or Britain’s HSBC.

A merger between Europe’s two biggest stock markets, Deutsche Boerse and Euronext, makes sense. 

It would provide a challenge to the London Stock Exchange where equity trading has been under pressure. 

Amsterdam, part of Euronext, has shown an ability to attract big initial public offerings such as Universal Music. Deutsche Boerse has cornered some derivatives trading through Eurex.

A combination could provide a market better able to compete with London and, most importantly, New York.

There are doubts as to whether Europe’s competition regulators would sanction such a deal. 

Paris might regard a shift in the centre of European trading towards Frankfurt as unwelcome. 

It is also unclear whether the EU and Germany have the appetite for the high volumes of derivatives, foreign currency and other riskier trading that have kept the Square Mile ahead of the game since Brexit.

As head of financial stability at the IMF, Tobias Adrian consistently warned of risks to global markets. 

His foreboding has been embraced by JP Morgan in a note cautioning about the risks in private credit, sovereign debt yields and the ‘miscalculation’ of AI-tech concentration values. 

These views are aligned with those of JP Morgan’s chairman Jamie Dimon.