He is a tax exile, he lives in Monaco, and, perhaps worst of all, he supported Brexit. As Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the founder of the chemicals giant Ineos, accuses the Labour government of \u2018economic vandalism\u2019, there will be plenty of MPs,\u00a0and probably even a few ministers, who will dismiss it as an embittered rant by an over-entitled billionaire. The trouble is, he is also about to close down three perfectly efficient petrochemical plants, and unless Andy Burnham and his team can come up with a way to bring energy costs down they will end up presiding over deindustrialisation on a scale that even Mrs Thatcher, the one politician they most dislike, would have found unacceptable.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We are witnessing a wave of deindustrialisation on a scale that has not been seen since the 1980s<\/p>\n
The closure of yet more factories is the last thing an already fragile British economy needs. But Ineos, one of the largest manufacturers still operating in Britain, has said that three plants in Hull, which between them employ 4,000 workers, may soon close. The reason? Britain\u2019s \u2018ridiculously high energy prices\u2019 according to Ratcliffe. The businesses are perfectly efficient by global standards, the workforce is disciplined and focused, and there is plenty of demand for the detergents, textiles and drugs they produce. But they simply can\u2019t operate with energy that is now 12 times the price in the United States, and eight times the price in China. Instead, they will have to be closed down, and everything they make will be replaced by imports. Production has already been paused at two of the plants and the third is set to come offline in the coming days.<\/p>\n