IT IS a question that’s been asked a lot. What’s the difference between now, when the threat to the Port Talbot steelworks appears to have galvanised efforts to keep them open, and just six months ago, when Redcar Steelworks were allowed to close with little more than handwringing of regret?

The difference is that, astoundingly, the Redcar closure was treated very largely as a local catastrophe. It was the impact on the local community that attracted virtually all the attention. Barely mentioned was the importance of maintaining a national steel industry, to which the loss of the Redcar works would be a significant blow.

But not as big as a shut-down of the larger Port Talbot works. It has taken the possible demise of that huge, multi-faceted enterprise to shake the powers-that-be out of their lethargy and to acknowledge the national dimension. In a complete reversal of the response to Redcar, that is now the prime driver – to use the jargon – of the efforts to save the Port Talbot works, with the benefit to the local community a bonus.

Yet what murky waters have been exposed by the saga. It turns out that the villain of the piece in the EU’s notorious ban on raising tariffs on cheap Chinese steel has been Britain itself. Our Government has argued that British companies using steel would suffer if forced to buy the higher-priced British product. Now, faced with the possible demise of our steel industry, it is urging them to do so.

Meanwhile we have learned that the open door for Chinese steel is almost certainly a trade-off for Chinese aid in building a nuclear power station, for which we, pioneers in the civil use of nuclear energy, are no longer capable. Doubly grateful, China now expresses thanks by slapping a tariff on a special kind of steel produced at Port Talbot.

Around the edges of this farrago have been some fascinating sidelights. Opposing steel nationalisation – naturally – a columnist in The Daily Telegraph was prepared to contemplate a Britain without a steel industry. He conceded: “There may one day be another war, or a large nation may go rogue. But we cannot run Britain on a war footing. The Government…could stockpile steel, or even set up a couple of mothballed plants.” Of course the sacked steelworkers would be hanging around for recall, and the steel stockpile would provide all the armaments we’d ever need.

TO her credit, Redcar MP Anna Turley did set the Redcar closure in the context of the national steel industry. Of course she was ignored. Now, while still deeply involved in the aftermath of the closure, and saving the rump of Teesside steel, she is nevertheless striking out in a different direction.

As dismayed as the rest of us by the suspended sentences granted for an exceptionally horrific act of animal cruelty at Redcar, she is pressing not only for justice in this case but for an “urgent” review of punishments for animal cruelty.

The maximum prison sentence of six months is utterly inadequate. Since courts always feel there could be something worse than what’s before them, maximum sentences are very rarely imposed. Bearing in mind the usual half-sentence release, six years for animal cruelty would not be excessive.