Restart coal mining and bring back traditional steelmaking to Wales, says Nigel Farage
Nigel Farage has called for the blast furnaces at Port Talbot's steelworks to reopen as Reform UK sets its sights on the Welsh Senedd elections in 2026.
On a visit to the town, the party leader said the resumption of traditional steelmaking should be the ambition.
Farage has also suggested some coal mines could re-open in Wales to power the production of steel in Port Talbot.
Speaking at a press conference, the Reform UK leader said he believes his party has a chance of ending Labour's long-standing dominance in Wales during the Senedd elections next May amid opinion poll momentum and gains made at the local polls last month.
The Labour UK government has backed plans for a new £1.25 billion electric arc furnace at the Tata steelworks, with the switch-on due in 2027 as part of the push towards greener production.
The plant's last blast furnace was shut down in September 2024, and nearly 2,000 people in Port Talbot have lost their jobs.
Criticising the government's current plans, Farage said: "The electric arc is fine for recycling steel, it doesn't produce the virgin steel needed for military hardware, but the problem is that it uses vast amounts of electric in the the most expensive industrial electric prices in the world.
"I very much doubt that furnace will ever be switched on . Our ambition is to reindustrialise Wales. Our belief is that we should make our own steel. Our belief is - for what uses coal still has - we should use our own coal.
"I'm not saying let's open up all the pits, what I am saying is there are specific types of coal for certain uses that we still need in this country and we need for the blast furnaces here that we should produce ourselves."
Tata Steel had been working to fully decommission and strip most of the iron and steelmaking assets across the Port Talbot site by the end of 2024, leaving little possibility of restarting the blast furnaces in their current form.The company said many of the existing 'heavy end' assets - such as blast furnaces and coke ovens - had reached the "end of their operational life."Tata Steel CEO Rajesh Nair has previously said that there was "no way" the blast furnaces could be kept going, for both technical and financial reasons.Professor Cameron Pleydell-Pearce, a steel expert and professor at Swansea University, told ITV Wales it would not be as straightforward as simply reopening the furnace in isolation, saying that there would be a need to import iron ore due to its low availability in the UK.Professor Pleydell-Pearce said: "One of the things that's important to remember is the furnace in Port Talbot was not shut down with the mind to restart it.""If you want to open any steel plant, you're going to have to invest hundreds of millions, if not billions, depending on the configuration that you want.... Because we're in a position where this furnace is going to be hard to restart, just from a technical perspective, it has to factor into it as well. So it's not just the investment that you're making, but the technical complexity of restarting."He continued: "It's not impossible, but the question is whether or not that fits into the strategy that's right for the UK. We have an abundance of scrap in the UK, so a scrap-recycling strategy makes sense. In other locations, there are plentiful supplies of iron ore and lower energy costs, so it might make sense for those locations to go with more ore-based steelmaking."
Speaking about Farage's proposals, Chris Bryant, MP for the Rhondda and Ogmore, said: "This is really cruel politics from Nigel Farage, trying to pretend he's got a plan and he hasn't got a plan at all.
"He couldn't afford what he's saying and the truth is the mines aren't going to re-open, they shouldn't re-open, these would be dangerous jobs and would be economically unviable. He should go home and be ashamed of himself."It makes me really cross that somebody waves this kind of flag, populism at its absolute worst. He knows he can't achieve it, he knows it wouldn't be right for climate change, for the economy, he knows he's on a hiding to nothing."
A spokesperson for Community Union, one of the largest unions representing steelworkers at Tata's Port Talbot site, said: 'We will always support credible policies that create more well-paid jobs in the steel sector, but our steel communities deserve better than to be used as a political football. If Reform have serious plans for the future of our steel sector in Wales, they should set them out in full.'
A Welsh Labour spokesperson has accused the Reform UK leader of bringing "fantasy politics" and a "magic money tree" to the town.
They said: 'The people of Wales will see through the false hope and false promises of a public-school boy from England who does not understand them and does not understand Wales.
In a wide-ranging press conference, Farage also announced a number of policies of immigration in Wales if Reform UK topped the polls next May:
A pledge to put local people at the front of the social housing queue and to stop the use of any building for asylum seeker accommodation
To scrap nation of sanctuary status for Wales
To stop funding for "woke" policies including: £10.5 million for Equality, Inclusion and Human Rights budget, £440,000 on developing insects for food, including insect-based food for children and to end funding to the Wales Refugee Council.
Farage's speech comes as Reform seeks to draw a line under internal clashes after chairman Zia Yusuf quit the party on Thursday only to return 48 hours later, saying the resignation had been 'born out of exhaustion'.
He referenced this disagreement in his speech saying: "We hit a speed bump- it could've been that we were driving more than 20mph", jibing at the Welsh Government's default speed limit policy - something he has pledged to scrap if Reform UK were in power in the Senedd.
It followed a row in which Yusuf described a question to the Prime Minister concerning a ban on burkas from his party's newest MP, Sarah Pochin, as 'dumb'.
During his speech Farage also welcomed two independent Merthyr Tydfil Councillors who have defected to Reform UK - Andrew Barry and David Hughes. When pressed on whether there would be more high-profile defections in the Senedd or in Parliament, and if he'll name any candidate to stand as First Minister in Wales, he insisted "we very much want to look at Reform Wales being autonomous. There are names in Wales that I am talking to."
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