We think we’ve got this argument correct here. It has to be only think because the outcome is so absurd as to make us think that we might not be right. But if we are then we seem to have entered the era of insanity over subsidies.
So, the ferry to the Scilly Isles. A new one or three is/are needed. The company that wishes to buy them, which runs the ferry service, applied for a subsidy so as to engage the services of a British shipyard to build them:
First, they spent years trying to unlock the required £50 million in state aid from the Levelling Up fund, which would have necessitated ordering a ship from a British dockyard.
That didn’t turn up so instead they adopted Plan B:
But their application failed, so instead the company took a £33 million loan from NatWest and put out a tender to build one new passenger ferry and two freight vessels. In September, it selected the giant French shipbuilder Piriou to complete the contract.
OK, seems reasonable enough to us. Yes, we are against such subsidies and yet we’re also old enough, long in the tooth enough, to know that they are going to happen in something like shipbuilding. But if the subsidy isn’t offered then obviously Plan B:
In a letter published last week, but sent before Christmas, Shapps expressed his anger to Robert Francis, chairman of the Isles of Scilly council. The defence secretary, who also doubles as the government’s shipbuilding tsar, criticised the ISSG for not picking a UK shipbuilder (he did not name Harland & Wolff directly) to build its new fleet.
The idea that we have a shipbuilding Tsar seems a little Romanov to us (perhaps noting that that didn’t turn out to be a very good governance system) but it’s the insistence that is being made here that really confuses.
You cannot have the subsidy which would necessitate - and also cover the extra costs of - using a British shipyard but you must use a British shipyard anyway?
The ferry company is an independent one, quoted on the London Stock Exchange no less. And a minister thinks it right to bully - even insist - in this manner? There’s something about storming the Winter Palace that sounds like a useful solution there.
But now the lunacy:
He also expressed his concern that the company was planning to increase fares to help cover the costs of the new fleet. A one-way ticket — currently advertised at £83.90 — may hit £100 as a result.
The minister is stating that the more expensive, British, shipyard must - sorry, should - be used and the argument being used in support of this contention is the price rises that would result from using the cheaper, non-British option?
Yes, we know, politics doesn’t have to be logical, usually isn’t. But really, you must use the more expensive supplier to reduce consumer costs? How about we try for a politics that isn’t actively insane?
That this is all about the Scilly Isles (yes, it is pronounced that way) is just icing on that cake.