Mix private equity, Brexit mania, state incompetence and what do you get? Scunthorpe | Will Hutton

British Steel's collapse reveals the common fate of industries left to fall into the hands of private equity

Across the Midlands and north of England - and in pockets of the south - there are once proud single-industry towns laid low, with no determined effort to make good what once was. It could be Chatham and Rochester in Kent - or Birkenhead, Wigan or Mansfield further north.

They survive as economies in which the main business is providing the foundational goods and services necessary to get by - supermarkets, petrol stations, hospitals, care homes. But there are few thriving private sector companies in 21st-century industries, a paucity of opportunity, and wages are below the national average.

The high-speed rail network HS2 is set to be put on 'pause' by a scorched-earth Tory government