Nigel Farage chases the Welsh dragon

New Statesman​

3 hours ago

Photo byReform is coming for Wales. That was Nigel Farage's key message in Port Talbot today (9 September), as he fired the starting gun for the Senedd election in May 2026.
It's been a mixed few days for the insurgent party. Its third-place finish in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election might seem disappointing, were it not for the fact that Reform has come out of nowhere to achieve 26 per cent of the vote – just five points below Labour's victorious performance. 'Reform blew up Scottish politics last week,' Farage told the assembled journalists. Wales is, he argued, due for a similarly seismic shock. And Reform had two new recently defected councillors to prove it.
The Hamilton news, however, was overshadowed by the drama unfolding within Reform regarding Zia Yusuf, who resigned as chairman on Thursday afternoon with zero notice. A mere 48 hours later, Yusuf had un-quit and was back in Reform (albeit in a slightly different role), fuelling attacks that the party is riven with infighting and not nearly grown-up enough to be taken seriously.
Farage tackled that head-on today, joking that 'We did hit a speed bump last week – it could be we were driving more than the recommended 20 miles an hour' (a reference to Wales's oft-derided speed-limit policy). Mostly, though, he wanted to talk about the other big political news of the hour: the Labour government's announcement that more than 75 per cent of pensioners would have their winter fuel payments restored. Farage wasted no time taking credit for the U-turn, repeatedly hailing the change in policy as a win for Reform and arguing at one point 'Pensioners saw us as being the best people to fight their cause on winter fuel payments'.
What does any of this have to do with Wales? The answer is about narrative. Building on his Westminster press conference last month, Farage is gradually trying to establish his party as a serious option for government. First, that meant eclipsing the Conservatives as the de facto opposition party. The next step is challenging Labour. And where better to do that than in Wales, where Labour has held power for 26 years – and where there is likely to be an audience for Reform's message of 'reindustrialisation'?
Because once Farage was done crowing about pressuring the Labour government into a winter fuel U-turn, reindustrialisation was the theme. Reform's ambition, he insisted, is to re-open the Port Talbot steelworks, whose blast furnaces were closed last year. (Still in credit-taking mode, he argued that Scunthorpe's blast furnaces would have faced a similar fate had he and Richard Tice not gone there at the crucial moment, pressuring the government into stepping in.) For an added bit of nostalgia, Reform also wants to bring back coal-mining.
There are a couple of issues with this. As intrepid journalists tried to point out multiple times, the way the blast furnaces were shut down means it is not possible to simply restart them. 'You can't restart a blast furnace with a press conference,' as a Welsh Labour spokesperson put it. While Farage insisted 'nothing's impossible', he did concede 'it might be easier to build a new one'. Which begs the question of why restarting the blast furnaces was such a core pillar of this speech in the first place.
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On re-opening the coal mines, another journalist pointed out that Welsh youngsters might not relish the opportunity of going down mines, not least as their fathers and grandfathers made every effort to spare them that fate. 'We're not forcing people down pits for goodness sake,' Farage quipped back, deflecting to the number of Brits working in the Australian mining industry.
As for the small issue of how Reform in Wales would achieve their coal plans when the Labour government in Westminster is never going to allow a return to coal-mining, Farage said simply 'we could always have a fight', suggesting his party could 'just do things'.
The clash between fantasy and reality continued. Since Reform laid out the beginnings of its economic programme in May, both the mainstream parties and independent economists have been falling over themselves to point out fiscal black holes in the region of tens of billions. Farage's defence was to deflect to the 'two or three trillions' of liabilities regarding public sector pensions. In other words, Reform's economic plans may be fantasy, but so (he suggested) were everyone else's. While this might have economist tearing their hair out, shock polling from More In Common over the weekend revealed that Labour and Reform are currently tied on who the public trust most to manage the economy.
Beyond the specific issue of de-industrialisation in Wales, two core themes emerged. First is that Farage is putting everything he has into presenting his party as ready for government – first councils, then Wales, then perhaps the United Kingdom. 'Our aim is to win. Our aim is to win a majority. Our aim as a party is to govern in Wales,' he said at one point. Later, he argued that Reform was the 'only party with a real chance of beating Labour next year'. This is no longer about being protest party. In fact, if the rapid exoneration of Zia Yusuf by Farage (not a man known for re-welcoming those who appear to have crossed him) tells us anything, it's how determined the Reform leader is to professionalise the party, even if it means letting go of grudges.
Second is that the media has cottoned on. Farage didn't get an easy ride today. Whereas the delusions of Reform's 2024 manifesto largely went unremarked upon, the flaws (financial, legal, practical) in Farage's proposals were picked apart. He was grilled on how he would define a Welsh person, on disability benefits, tax policy – and yes, on his party's personnel troubles and why it hadn't yet announced its Welsh leader. This isn't entertainment – and with the party just a few points behind Plaid Cymru in the polls, Reform's efforts to win Wales are not a publicity stunt.
[See also: Non-voters are Nigel Farage's secret weapon]
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