Ben Houchen and his pack of grinning Tory grifters have turned Teesworks into a gold-plated con: an industrial-scale asset strip dressed up as 'levelling up.' With telephone number funding in public subsidies funnelling into private pockets, they’ve handed sweetheart deals to their mates while local communities rot. The land, once public, is now a profit-spewing plaything for developers, and Houchen’s cronies are laughing all the way to the bank while pretending it’s regeneration. It’s not, it’s robbery in broad daylight, and the bastards know it.
In the heart of Teesside, the Teesworks project was heralded as a beacon of regeneration, promising jobs and prosperity following the closure of the British Steel plant in Redcar. However, under Conservative Mayor Ben Houchen's stewardship, it has become emblematic of a troubling pattern: public assets being transferred into private hands with minimal oversight, raising serious concerns about governance and value for money.
In 2015, Teesside's beating industrial heart was ripped out with the closure of the Redcar steelworks, one of the last vestiges of Britain’s once-proud manufacturing legacy. Behind the tearful headlines and smouldering chimneys was something far colder: a brutal, calculated political decision. A betrayal not just by the Tories in Westminster, but by a limp Labour establishment on the ground who failed to raise their voices, let alone their fists, when it mattered most.
The loss of Redcar was criminal negligence, just as it was in Ravenscraig, Port Talbot and Sheffield and a dozen other cities. The British steel industry didn’t fall, it was pushed. Pushed off a cliff by a procession of governments more interested in sucking up to the City of London than defending the communities that built this country with furnace heat and calloused hands. From Thatcher’s scorched-earth neoliberalism to Blair’s grinning market worship, from Cameron’s austerity gutting to Starmer’s tepid triangulations, none of them grasped, or cared to grasp, the basic principle of the steel cycle: that steel is not just another commodity. It’s strategic. It's cyclical. And it needs long-term planning, not short-term plunder. The steel cycle is no mystery to anyone outside Westminster’s revolving-door consultants and PPE graduates. Demand rises and falls. Prices fluctuate. And if you shut the blast furnaces during a downturn, you can’t just magic them back into life when war comes knocking or when supply chains collapse under the weight of global crisis. But time and again, British governments have done just that: let the industry wither in the lean years, flogging off national assets to foreign conglomerates, then standing slack-jawed with their dicks in their hands when the country finds itself at the mercy of hostile or unstable exporters. And why? Because our political class is addicted to short-term profit. Obsessed with 'market efficiency' and the quarterly report. The Treasury sees a quick sale to Tata or Jingye as a win. Never mind that it means we lose control over a pillar of our national infrastructure. Never mind the skilled workers tossed on the scrapheap from South Wales to Scunthorpe. Never mind the fact that steel underpins everything from rail to defence to hospitals. No, the only metric that matters is whether the FTSE smiled that day.
George Osborne, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, cast himself as a moderniser, eager to 'balance the books' at any cost, even if it meant burning communities to the ground. In 2015, Sahaviriya Steel Industries (SSI), the Thai firm running the Redcar steelworks, went into liquidation. Thousands of Teesside steelworkers watched their jobs vanish overnight. Osborne and his government stood back and let it happen. In any other country, France, Germany, even the US, a strategic asset like steel would be safeguarded. But Osborne waved it off as collateral damage in his war on public spending. This wasn’t just economics. This was ideology. The Tories saw steelworkers not as skilled tradespeople but as relics of a Britain they wanted to erase. No rescue. No nationalisation. Just an £80 million 'hardship fund' a pittance for a region that had been decimated.
Local Labour MPs Tom Blenkinsopp and Anna Turley should have been roaring in the Commons, chaining themselves to the blast furnace gates, demanding action. Instead? Muted concern, half-hearted platitudes, cautious press releases, and far too much deference to the same centrist managerialism that had already gutted their party. Blenkinsopp, always more interested in Twitter spats than class warfare, toed the line and offered next to nothing. Turley, despite talking a good game on community and workers' rights, failed to hold Osborne’s feet to the fire when it mattered. She claimed she fought tooth and nail. She did, but it wasn't to save the steelworks - her war was against Corbyn, the socialists in her CLP and her constituents. She was more interested in factional purges than solutions for her constituents. Both were useless. The only thing they were good at was blocking the accounts on social media of anyone who questioned them. Their inability to channel the anger of Teesside’s working class left a vacuum and that vacuum would be filled in 2019.
The general election of 2019 was not just a political landslide. It was a reckoning. The people of Teesside, betrayed by the Tories and abandoned by a Labour Party that had long stopped listening, sent a message that echoed like molten iron hitting water. Redcar turned blue. So did much of the Red Wall. Yes, Boris Johnson’s Brexit bluster played its part, but it was more than that. It was payback. A decade of deindustrialisation, stagnation, politicians who promised rebirth but delivered empty enterprise zones and foodbanks and a local Labour Party that was gutted of its activists and quite frankly didn't give a fuck about Teesside. The steelworkers remembered. Their families remembered. When the blast furnace went silent, so did their faith in the political class.
The electric arc furnace at South Lackenby: Much has been made in the news recently about how we need one at Scunthorpe to safeguard national security. We had one in Teesside.
When Redcar steelworks fell, over 2,000 direct jobs were lost, with thousands more in the supply chain. But this wasn’t just about jobs, it was about identity, dignity, history. Generations had worked those furnaces. The skills, the pride, the community spirit, all treated as expendable by a government obsessed with spreadsheet economics and a Labour Party too flaccid and moribund to challenge them.
Fast forward to today, and we see the same land, Teesworks, handed over to private developers by Tory mayor Ben Houchen with little scrutiny. The promised and heavily taxpayer funded 'regeneration' is a bonanza for the well-connected, not the workers. The legacy of Osborne’s betrayal is being compounded, not corrected.
Initially, the Teesworks venture was a 50-50 partnership between the South Tees Development Corporation (STDC) and private developers. Yet, by 2021, 90% of the shares had been handed over to developers Chris Musgrave and Martin Corney, reportedly without any financial investment from them. This transfer included land parcels sold for as little as £1 per acre, despite the site receiving over £560 million in public funding for remediation and development.
The sheer contempt and disrespect of the Mayor and local Tory MP, Simon Clarke was personified in the demolition of the art deco Dorman Long tower in South Bank. The secretive demolition of the iconic tower that dominated the landscape, mere hours after a last-minute preservation order , lays bare the sneering contempt that the Mayor and Tory MPs hold for the people they claim to serve. This wasn't just an act of destruction; it was a calculated insult, carried out under cover of darkness, silencing the community’s voice and bulldozing their history without a shred of consultation or respect. In their rush to appease developers and serve up public land on a silver platter, they showed exactly where their loyalties lie: and wasn't with with the people of Teesside. It’s a grotesque display of political arrogance, steamrolling heritage and democracy in one fell swoop.
An independent review commissioned by the government found no evidence of corruption but highlighted significant issues with transparency and governance. The report criticised the 'culture of excessive confidentiality' and the absence of robust mechanisms to ensure public funds were being used effectively. But of course the public funds weren't being used effectively, they were being back pocketed by tories and their mates.
Despite a significant drop in revenue, from £142.9 million to £22.2 million in one year, the private developers received at least £26.4 million in dividends and consultancy fees. This raises questions about the financial management of the project and whether the public received a fair return on its substantial investment, which of course it didn't and this just turned the screw even further on this crock of shit.
Late in the day, Labour MPs and local stakeholders have called for a National Audit Office investigation to scrutinise the project's finances and governance structures. They argue that the current arrangement disproportionately benefits private developers at the expense of taxpayers and local communities. I am assuming this is being driven in Westminster by the Department of No Shit Sherlock and the Ministry of You Couldn't Fucking Make it up
The Teesworks project, under Ben Houchen's leadership, exemplifies the dangers of opaque public-private partnerships where public assets are leveraged for private gain without adequate oversight. As the region grapples with economic challenges, it's imperative to ensure that regeneration efforts genuinely serve the public interest rather than enriching a select few.Sky News+7The Guardian+7cpbml.org.uk+7 Financial TimesUK officials recommend probe into Houchen's Teesworks project114 days ago Financial TimesDevelopers of UK regeneration project refuse to renegotiate ownership216 days ago Financial TimesTwo founders of Teesworks regeneration project hit out at mayor Houchen370 days ago
In a former life when I was recording music, I wrote and released a song called Infant Hercules - which was the term coined by Gladstone for Middlesbrough because of its ironworks. The ironworks may have gone but it seems more apt now than ever:
The town that I live in was built out of ironThe souls of the children carved out of our stone hillsOur leaders betray us in a firestorm of fearLions led by Donkeys and it ends now and hereAnd I can't understand how we all still allow itLied to, despised and live and die by the walletRewarding the thieves and blaming the victimsI used to be proud of this country I live in
The sociopaths who wreck lives for a livingDon't want you to protest or voice your misgivingsThough rich, they want more for their Temple of MammonCrushing dissent with a cannon and batonSo don't forget when you're lining your trunkYour sand castle need just one tide to be sunkYou might be divorced from the harm that you doBut you aren't insulated, keep on turning the screw
We were built from Ironstone (Near the giant blue dragonfly)And we're always on our own (And we're taking you down)We were built from Ironstone (Near the giant blue dragonflyAnd we're always on our own (And we're taking you down)
The town that I live in was built out of ironThe souls of our children carved out of the stone hillsYour wealth: Built in mills, under hills and by riversI'll make you a deal that one day we'll deliverSo mark my words you might think you are safeYou lie, we're defined by your bile and your hateDon't think for one second that crushed, lost and done inI hope your nice gates will hold fast - 'cos it's coming
On the back of the single it said:
'This single is dedicated to Lord Handsinthetill of Haverton Hill, Sir Sly-Man Crank & all the over-privileged bastards who've made it their mission to erase 150 years of working class history from the map, whilst conveniently enriching themselves in the process. We all know what you did, we won't forgive and we won't forget. You all belong in a prison cell with Mister Big, who's in with the warders & wants you to be his puppy dawg'
They didn't just shut down the steelworks,they gutted a way of life. These over privileged bastards torched our history for profit, ripped up our culture like it was disposable, and pissed on generations of graft. I have a vested interest in this: My mam was from Grangetown and I was born there, my dad from the Manor in Sheffield, both solid, proud, working-class steelworker stock. They were from a class that built this country with hard work and most of who died before their time in the name of profit while the public school parasites who run the show now never did a hard days work in their lives. Teesside didn’t die, it was murdered. And the culprits are still in Westminster and the boardrooms telling us it was 'inevitable.' Well no, it wasn't inevitable, it was ideological. It was class war. And now we need domestic steel more than ever and there's no one to make it and nowhere to produce it. And one of the most nauseating profiteers was Ben Houchen, grinning like a pound shop Thatcher while flogging off the land beneath our feet. He postured as a local saviour while handing out slices of Teesside's industrial corpse to his mates behind closed doors. A local public school snake oil grifter who helped auction off the soul of our community. A spam faced vulture in a mayor’s chain.
Fuck you all, you thieving tory cunts.
The world has gone mad. If you enjoyed reading this, please feel free to look at the rest of the blogs on www.TetleysTLDR.com. They're free to view, there's no paywall, they aren't monetised and I won't ask you to buy me a coffee. Also please free to share anything you find of interest, we only get the message out if people are aware of it. Just a leftie, standing in front of another leftie, asking to be read. All the best, Tetley
