The news that Bombardier is to shed 1,400 jobs from its Derby train factory has unleashed a storm of protest in the UK.
After the UK government awarded a £1.4 billion contract for 1,200 carriages for the Thameslink project to German rival Siemens, Bombardier said it does not have sufficient orders to keep the plant running at its present level.
By the end of September Bombardier will have finished work on two existing contracts, and have only one remaining.
Bombardier is the only company left in the UK that makes rolling stock for the rail industry. Union leaders and opposition politicians have urged Transport Secretary Philip Hammond to review the decision, but the government claims it was obliged to follow European procurement rules.
Those same rules presumably apply to other countries, too, but we do not see the French and the Germans awarding contracts to companies outside their domestic markets. Perhaps someone in the government should ask them how they manage it, before we have no industry left.
