THE government is doing “everything that is practicable and possible” to protect Britain’s steel industry.

This was the line trotted out ad nauseam yesterday by Chancellor George Osborne, Business Secretary Sajid Javid and other Tory mouthpieces.

Now, one would have thought that some canny adviser might have spotted the idiocy of coming out with what is undoubtedly the biggest lie of the year so far on April Fool’s Day.

But apparently not.

Responding to accusations that increased import taxes on the dumping of cheap Chinese steel were being blocked, which they patently are, by him, Osborne bizarrely chose to issue a statement in an Asda car park in Manchester denying the fact.

Still it may actually have been a description of government efforts to address the issue, “every little helps…”

In this case very little indeed.

Osborne egregiously claimed Britain was working with other countries to make sure tariffs were in place on imports of unfairly cheap steel from countries such as China, when in fact the opposite is true.

Adding with as much faux sympathy as he could fake, that: “First of all, it’s a really difficult time for the steelworkers and their families.”

He then stated: “There’s a global crisis in steel, you go to all these other countries, they have got similar problems because the price has fallen.”

Apart from, ooh, I don’t know … Germany perhaps? Which actually invested in its steel industry, which is thriving and exports more to Britain than China.

Meanwhile Javid, who obviously drew the short straw, belatedly turned up at Port Talbot yesterday where he was greeted with roughly the same enthusiasm as the announcement of an outbreak of the Ebola virus.

Javid, freshly returned from his holiday to Australia, insisted that the government was on the steel-workers’ side.

On their side? He wasn’t even in the same hemisphere.

This didn’t exactly happen overnight you know. It’s taken years of neglect and malfeasance to reach this nadir.

He then claimed that the government is “working hard” to find a long-term solution for Port Talbot and the wider steel industry and that all possible ministerial, official and diplomatic influence will be exerted to secure the industry’s future.

Apart of course from the only logical course of action, renationalisation, which is like kryptonite to these scumbags.

Even given the fact that it was April 1 this lot were blatantly taking the piss.