But there’s a deeper reason too. British Steel was privatized by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government in 1988. It was a flagship policy. For a Conservative government to take it back into public ownership, barely alive, would be tantamount to admitting that the privatization strategy pursued by the “Iron Lady” was a terrible, terrible mistake.
Even now, the government is desperately trying to find a way of keeping it in the private sector. But there is little hope of a buyer. The Conservative government faces an awful choice: allow British Steel to fail, with the loss of up to 25,000 jobs, or swallow its pride and nationalize it.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/francescoppola/2019/05/23/how-a-private-equity-firm-brought-about-the-death-of-british-steel/#1267485c4824
