Jonathan Reynolds says allowing British Steel to collapse would have cost £1bn as public ownership looks increasingly likelyThe shadow business secretary, Andrew Griffith, was the chief business secretary to the then prime minister Boris Johnson during the months in 2019 when British Steel went into administration.He has defended the move to sell British Steel to Jingye, claiming it was “the only deal at the time”.From my recollection, those conversations had been ongoing for some time. It was led by the secretary of state.You have got to remember that Jingye was the only bidder at the time. It was a deal that was welcomed by the GMB union, by the community union, and by UK steel. ..He believes nationalisation of the Scunthorpe plant is the right move because he claims the plant’s Chinese owner, Jingye, is a “bad actor”.Farage accused the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) of deliberately sabotaging British Steel, but provided no evidence for his claim. “This is a big strategic decision by the CCP,” he said. Asked for his evidence to support that claim, Farage said: “You can call it intuition if you like.”Farage said, again without evidence, that he was “100% certain they bought British Steel to close British Steel”.Farage says it is hard to estimate how much it would cost the taxpayer to nationalise British Steel “because we can’t trust Jingye’s figures” and that the company “artificially inflated” its losses and has not opened its accounts up to proper auditing.Farage said we are living through an “industrial massacre” and a “complete rethink” about British industry is necessary to protect domestic production and interests.