The Guardian view on the steel crisis: Port Talbot matters more than China | Editorial

Sajid Javid finally made it to south Wales and said some important things, but government strategy has been badly exposed by the public reaction to the Tata sell-off

Sajid Javid said some important things on Friday when he finally made it to Port Talbot almost three days after Tata Steel decided to pull out of its UK steel operations. The business secretary said the steel industry is absolutely vital to UK manufacturing. He said there most certainly will be interested buyers of the Tata assets. He said that he was on the steel workers' side. And he said the UK government supported tariffs against dumping. Warm words were needed and it was important Mr Javid uttered some.

The problem, though, is that such assurances are too little, too late and too flimsy. If the business secretary was as serious as he now claims about finding long-term solutions for the UK steel industry he would have been proving it by trying to find them months ago, when the crisis that made landfall this week was still a gathering storm on the financial oceans, rather than now, when the damage is already being done. The fear, underpinned by Mr Javid's disturbing infatuation with the libertarian individualist ideas of the American writer Ayn Rand and by his low-profile laissez-faire approach to the steel crisis generally - surely he must have known the Tata situation before he set off to Australia - is that what he brought to Port Talbot were crocodile tears.