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Business Secretary Flies Back Into Steel Storm

Business Secretary Flies Back Into Steel Storm

Sajid Javid, once seen as a Tory rising star and potential future party leader, has had plenty of time to reflect that being in the wrong place at the wrong time can be the kiss of death for a political career.

After all, it is estimated that after spending just 34 hours in Sydney while the British steel industry went into meltdown he has now spent 45 hours on aeroplanes flying to and from Australia.

Whatever possessed the Business Secretary to go to Australia - on what looks like at best a gentle fact finding mission and at worst a junket - instead of Mumbai to lobby Tata steel bosses, he is paying a heavy political price now.

His globe-trotting would not be quite such a serious blunder if he had not taken his eldest daughter Sophia, 16, with him and planned to extend his visit by several days so he could go on a holiday with her.

No wonder Stephen Kinnock, son of former Labour leader Neil and now making a name for himself as the new MP for Aberavon and a doughty fighter for the threatened Port Talbot steelworks, is livid with Javid.

"We've known for several weeks that 29 March was D-day for British steel which is why I, Roy Rickhuss (boss of the steel union Community) and others went to Mumbai,” Kinnock junior told Sky News.

"We feel that a minister should have been with us. Instead Sajid Javid jetted off to Australia and now it seems he did so not entirely for work-related reasons.

"It just characterises the incompetence and indifference the government has shown towards the British steel industry since 2010, it reflects a broader pattern."

That has clearly touched a raw nerve with the millionaire ex-banker. A senior source close to the Business Secretary told Sky News: “This is absolutely ridiculous!

“You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who has done more to help the UK steel industry than Sajid Javid.

“The fact he has just spent almost 24 hours in the air, flying half-way across the globe, proves how seriously he takes what is going on at Port Talbot. It is frankly insulting to suggest that his focus is anywhere other than securing a viable long-term future.

“Mr Javid has been completely transparent regarding his daughter accompanying him on this trip and has covered her costs entirely. There is no suggestion whatsoever that there was any cost to the taxpayer and all proper processes have been followed.”

The 'Sophiagate' fiasco could not have come at a worse time for the soon-to-be jet-lagged Business Secretary and his Tory leadership ambitions, however. A survey on who should be the next Conservative Party leader carried out for The Independent puts him on just five per cent with the public and two per cent with Tory members.

But Mr Javid is not alone in feeling the heat in the row over the future of the steel industry. Few senior Tories emerge with credit from the events of the past few days.

George Osborne broke his silence on the steel crisis during talks with G20 finance ministers in Paris and made the questionable claim that the Government had intervened in the battle to save Port Talbot.

“Faced with a situation where the steel price collapsed and the real possibility that Port Talbot could have closed overnight, we intervened to buy breathing space and will do whatever we can to find new buyers so Port Talbot and the steel industry has a long term future,” said the Chancellor.

Intervened? What he meant, I’m told, was that the Government has been working with Tata to seek to avoid an outright closure and ensure a breathing space to try to find a buyer, no more than that.

Not quite intervening in the Michael Heseltine sense, then. When he was appointed President of the Board of Trade by John Major, “Hezza” told the 1992 Tory conference he would intervene “before breakfast, before lunch, before tea and before dinner” and then on the next morning he would start again!

I wonder what the 83-year-old Lord Heseltine makes of the present Tory government’s handling of this steel crisis.

Another Tory veteran, Ken Clarke, who launched the privatisation of British Steel in a Commons statement in December 1987 when he was a DTI minister, has not been terribly helpful to David Cameron and George Osborne during the current row.

“I know South Wales well,” the veteran bruiser said in an interview. “I’ve driven past Port Talbot many times.”

At least he didn’t say, as Sajid Javid might, that he had flown over it in an aeroplane.