‘Our ambition is to reindustrialise Wales,’ Reform’s Nigel Farage announced to a small room lit up with turquoise lights at the back of Port Talbot’s Plaza Café. The Reform leader had chosen the ideal place to launch his long campaign for the Senedd next May. The town’s last traditional blast furnace closed in October; Farage wants to see them reopened. ‘A Reform government based in Cardiff is going to be very different,’ he smiled at the assembled press pack. ‘It’s going to be very, very different indeed.’
Reform UK’s campaign in Wales is targeted at working-class, non-graduate voters fed up with their failing public services and lack of opportunity. It’s not just industry the party is focusing on here: Farage promised that under a Reform administration, Welsh people would be first in line for social housing. He wants to launch as many trades and skills colleges as possible so that young people from the age of 15 can begin to work in engineering and AI – a move which the Reform leader hopes will lead to further investment in the area. He is championing a ‘buy Welsh, build Welsh’ mantra – where he claims he will ensure that procurement contracts ‘go as much as is reasonably possible’ to Welsh providers – to ‘stop the globalist thinking’. And, of course, Farage has pledged to scrap the ‘ridiculous’ 20mph speed limit that exists across the country.
Much of today’s speech was about Farage positioning himself as the people’s champion
It’s an attractive package – but has Reform really thought through the costs? As one BBC journalist told Farage, industry experts believe it would be ‘impossible’ to reopen Wales’s blast furnaces due to the raw material contained inside them. A Welsh government couldn’t manage it on its own. No, Farage agreed, insisting he is framing the ‘reindustrialisation’ of Wales as an ‘ambition’ not a ‘promise’. The Reform leader admitted his plan to reopen furnaces and coal mines would require help from the UK government too to be successful – but Sir Keir Starmer has banned licences for new mines. ‘We can always have a fight!’ Farage hit back cheerfully, suggesting a Reform-led Senedd would seek to defy Westminster. ‘And who knows? There may be situations where we just do things, and we’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it.’
Much of today’s speech was about Farage positioning himself as the people’s champion versus Starmer. The Clacton MP sought to use news of the government’s winter fuel U-turn to his advantage. ‘The Labour government is in a state of absolute blind panic,’ he declared. ‘I think it’s pretty fair to say that Reform is now leading much of their agenda, certainly a lot of their narrative.’ Pointing to his party’s big wins in the local elections – and Reform’s narrow victory in Runcorn – Farage said it was his campaigning on the unpopular winter fuel policy that galvanised voters to back his party and eventually led to Labour’s U-turn. Similar was claimed after Starmer’s ‘island of strangers’ immigration speech by Labour’s own backbenchers – some rather affronted that the Prime Minister appeared to be caving to Faragists.
Reform UK has just experienced a relative victory in Scotland, where, despite coming third, the party’s Hamilton by-election candidate picked up 26 per cent of the vote from a standing start – only three points and around 500 votes behind the Scottish nationalists. The result in a country where Reform has minimal manpower and resources has bolstered Farage’s confidence elsewhere: that his party not only has the potential to become the official opposition in Wales but that Reform UK could become the largest party in the Senedd:
I want to make it absolutely clear our aim is very simple: Our aim is to win. Our aim is to win a majority and our aim as a party is to govern in Wales, and I believe that it is achievable.
On devolution, Farage insists the debate to scrap the Senedd is ‘dead’ – but says:
The argument that we’re going to put is that devolution has not served Wales well, not because of the principle itself, but because of the incompetence of those who have for 26 years been running it.
Labour in Wales certainly hasn’t been helped much by its sister party at Westminster, with all of Liz Kendall’s talk of benefit cuts. Meanwhile Welsh Labour is rapidly falling out of favour with voters as NHS performance worsens and the cost-of-living crisis continues to bite. Recent Survation polling shows that fewer than two-thirds of those who backed Starmer in 2024 say they would vote for Eluned Morgan’s reds in the next Senedd election. And while Plaid Cymru benefits from Labour failings, the nationalist party faces difficulty in expanding its base.
Farage is not unaware of his opponents’ weaknesses, telling his crowd today: ‘We’re lucky with our enemies because Labour really are failing in Wales.’ He’s on a lucky streak at the moment: changes to the Senedd’s proportional representation voting system and seat numbers look to favour parties like Reform next year. While the electoral changes make European-style three-party coalitions more likely, Farage has said he would work with anyone.
But while the Reform leader talks a strong game when it comes to his plans for the country – as James Heale wrote in this week’s Spectator, Wales is third in Farage’s four-step plan to become PM – he hasn’t yet managed to convince any sitting Senedd members to defect to his party. Today he announced two new councillors – former independents Andrew Barry and David Hughes – which takes Reform UK’s total in Wales to 11, including two recently elected under the party banner. The Reform leader hints he has been talking to rival Members of the Senedd, however, adding: ‘You might be in for a surprise before too long.’
While the ‘bump in the road’ of Zia Yusuf’s resignation has been overcome, it’s a reminder that, for all Farage’s skill in campaigning, Reform UK still faces significant challenges if the party is to fulfil its full potential.
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