Britain’s industrial collapse and the silence of those who could stop it

Britain is quietly unravelling. Not with riots or resignations, but with the slow, suffocating collapse of its industrial base—one factory at a time. The numbers are stark: energy costs twice the European average, four times higher than in the US. Manufacturers, the backbone of regions already hollowed out by decades of neglect, are now warning of bankruptcy within a year. And the response from Westminster? A deafening silence.

This isn’t just an energy crisis. It’s a crisis of priorities. While the government scrambles to regulate social media for under-16s and debates assisted dying, entire sectors are being priced out of existence. The message is clear: some industries are expendable. Some jobs are collateral damage. And some parts of the country—those outside the London-Oxford-Cambridge triangle—don’t merit the same urgency as a culture war skirmish.

The death spiral of British industry

Make UK’s survey isn’t just another doom-laden report. It’s a death certificate for swathes of the country’s manufacturing sector. Companies that survived Brexit, the pandemic, and supply chain chaos are now being finished off by energy bills that defy economic logic. The UK’s industrial electricity prices are the highest in the G7, a fact that should shame any government claiming to champion growth.

But this isn’t just about costs. It’s about who bears them. The North East, the Midlands, Wales—regions that never fully recovered from the last round of deindustrialisation—are being hit hardest. These are the same areas where GB News finds its most loyal audience, where the "liberal, Islington consensus" Grade dismissed is seen as a distant irrelevance. The irony? The very people who rail against metropolitan elites are the ones being abandoned by a government that treats their livelihoods as disposable.

The political economy of neglect

Where is the outrage? Where are the emergency measures, the subsidies, the diplomatic pressure on energy suppliers? Instead, we get performative gestures: a social media ban for teenagers, a debate on assisted dying, and Michael Grade’s defence of GB News as a bastion of "plurality." Plurality for whom? For the right-wing pundits who amplify culture wars while the factories they claim to champion close their doors?

The government’s inaction isn’t just negligence. It’s a choice. A choice to prioritise ideological battles over economic survival. A choice to let market forces—distorted by geopolitics and corporate greed—dictate which industries live or die. And a choice to ignore the fact that deindustrialisation isn’t just about jobs. It’s about communities, skills, and the very fabric of a country that once prided itself on making things.

The media’s complicity

Grade’s defence of GB News is revealing. He frames criticism of the channel as an attack on free speech, a liberal elite trying to silence dissent. But what about the free speech of the workers whose jobs are disappearing? The voices of the manufacturers warning of collapse? The communities facing another generation of decline?

The truth is, Britain’s media landscape is as fractured as its economy. GB News thrives on grievance, not solutions. The broadsheets debate cultural legacies—Virginia Woolf’s resurgence, Don McCullin’s final book—while the structural collapse of the country’s industrial base merits barely a mention. When was the last time you saw a front-page investigation into why British energy prices are so grotesquely out of step with the rest of the world? Or why the government’s response has been so tepid?

What’s left when the factories close?

The UK is sleepwalking into a future where it makes less and less. Where its economic model is built on finance, services, and the hollowed-out remnants of industries that once employed millions. Where the North-South divide isn’t just a political talking point, but a chasm that defines who thrives and who is left behind.

And yet, the conversation in Westminster remains stubbornly detached from this reality. Assisted dying, social media bans, culture wars—these are the issues that dominate the political agenda. Meanwhile, the real economy bleeds. The people who built this country with their hands are told to adapt, to retrain, to accept that their way of life is over.

This isn’t just an economic failure. It’s a moral one. A failure to recognise that a country that doesn’t make things is a country that doesn’t control its own destiny. A failure to understand that when you price out industry, you don’t just lose jobs—you lose the skills, the innovation, and the resilience that come with making things.

The question now is whether anyone in power will notice before it’s too late. Or whether Britain’s industrial collapse will be just another footnote in a history of decline—mourned by the few, ignored by the many, and exploited by the next wave of populists who promise to make Britain great again, even as the last factories close their doors.