British Steel on a razor’s edge: inside Starmer’s Scunthorpe rescue mission

There were suspicions, legal wheezes and a plan to divert a ship to Gibraltar to seize cargo, as ministers' anxieties rose

By next weekend, a cargo ship carrying more than 50,000 tonnes of coking coal from Australia will dock at Immingham. In other circumstances, its arrival would be unremarkable. But the moment Navios Alegria reaches the Lincolnshire port will be the culmination of the government's high-wire act to keep the UK's last steel furnaces running.

MPs were recalled from their Easter recess last Saturday to pass emergency legislation handing the government control over British Steel, which operates Britain's last two blast furnaces capable of producing steel from scratch using coke and iron ore.