Nationalising British Steel is a story we already know the ending to. Repeating it is the definition of insanity, writes James Price

Labour has already led the public to question the government’s sanity on more than one occasion this term. But now it feels like the government is literally testing the time-honoured definition of insanity: doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results.

That is because it has, at short notice, just voted to nationalise British Steel. Again.

A short history of British Steel

We know how this story ends. British steel was nationalised for the first time in 1967. Needless to say, it led to more and more inefficiencies, not least because employment was prioritised over any kind of productivity gains. This led to an inability to compete against global innovators, and was privatised by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.

After years of increasing regulations and taxes........

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