Labour's Nationalised Steel.

 Did nationalised steel in early 70s lose a thousand pounds a minute?

Yes, that famous claim is widely used in UK political and economic history. While it is a slight exaggeration for rhetorical effect, it is rooted in the reality of the British Steel Corporation’s (BSC) enormous financial crisis in the late 1970s. [1, 2, 3]

The math behind the myth:

• The Reality: By the late 1970s and early 1980s, BSC was losing roughly \(\$1.8\) billion to \(\$2\) billion a year. In a 1979 interview, then-industry secretary Sir Keith Joseph famously stated that the corporation was losing roughly \(\$1\) million a day.
• The Exaggeration: To hammer home just how catastrophic this was, political commentators and critics often inflated the "day" figure into a "minute" figure. Losing \(\$1\) million a day equates to about \(\$700\) a minute. Losing \(\$1\) million a minute would be a staggering \(\$1.44\) billion a day, which was not the case. [1, 2]

These losses were largely driven by the global steel crisis, overcapacity, outdated plants, and government reluctance to shut down loss-making plants in deprived industrial regions like Sheffield, Scunthorpe, and Corby. [1, 2, 3]