THE steel cold realities of governing are hitting the new Labour government hard. It had only the briefest of honeymoons before its new MPs were hit by waves of discontent from pensioners losing their winter fuel allowance, and now it is caught up in the pitiless world of global finance and finds itself presiding over the loss of 2,500 steelmaking jobs in Port Talbot.

Despite claiming that there was a better deal to be done with owner Tata, Labour has had to agree to roughly the same terms as the Conservatives. It hasn’t saved any of the jobs, although it does seem to have got better redundancy packages, which will no doubt be welcome.

Let’s hope the negotiators on the “stroke of a pen” deal for Hitachi at Aycliffe can come up with the goods.

Labour also has secured a Memorandum of Understanding with Tata, which could be important because next week, Jingye, the Chinese owner of British Steel is expected to announce the closure of the blast furnace at Scunthorpe with the loss of a further 2,500 jobs.

Beyond the impact on these unfortunate people’s lives, this will leave Britain without the capability of making virgin steel from coal and iron ore – we will be the only major G20 economy in this position.

The electric arc furnaces, which are planned for Wales, Scunthorpe and Teesside, require fewer hands and are much greener than blast furnaces, which is good, but they only recycle existing steel.

This looks like a strategic weakness for Britain, and should we require any virgin steel – say, for any of the 1.5m new homes Labour wishes to build – we will have to import it. Therefore, although our steel industry is heading for “net zero”, another country will be pumping out the emissions on our behalf.