That worry was well placed. As the Reform UK leader set out a multi-billion-pound unfunded “ambition” without any detailed costings, he also backed himself into a corner.
Which conjures up the absurd image of Farage hoisting himself into the cab of a JCB digger to break ground on his own coal seam in South Wales and consequently face prison for it. His supporters should get the poster paint ready: “Free the Port Talbot One”.
“I am not standing here and – no doubt some will lampoon this – I am not saying let’s open up all the pits,” Farage said. “What I am saying is there is coal, specific types of coal for certain uses, that we still need in this country and we certainly will need for the blast furnaces here that we should produce ourselves rather than importing it.”
There are several sticking points. Firstly, the Senedd doesn’t have the resources or capability to reopen the blast furnaces. At a cost of billions of pounds, it would have to be a decision made in Westminster, particularly as Farage said he was keen to save public money by cutting waste in Wales, rather than raising taxes.
Thirdly, even if you start afresh, you would need privat- sector investment. Even Tata, a massive and experienced multinational owner of Port Talbot steelworks, was losing up to £2m a day ahead of its closure last autumn. Who would enter that market now?
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“All the coal in Wales is gone, and that’s why the coal mines closed in the 1980s. Whatever you think of Margaret Thatcher, she realised that the coal was becoming much more sparsely distributed and much more expensive to mine. As an economist who’s done a lot of work in the area for a long time, it’s such a non-starter, it makes me angry that it’s even a thing.”
“Yes, it is going to cost in the low billions to do it and I am not even pretending it will be easy,” Farage argued. “But what I am saying is we are going to be using huge amounts of steel over the decades to come. We have to do everything we can to try to start thinking about being more self-sufficient.
For Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University in London, Farage’s intervention brought to mind the speech former Conservative prime minister John Major made in 1993, in which he set out a vision of Britain as “the country of long shadows on county cricket grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs and dog lovers.”
The UK steel industry’s importance to the overall economy has decreased over time. In 1990, it contributed 0.3 per cent of total economic output, while it now contributes less than 0.1 per cent.
Last month, the first polling for the 2026 Senedd race by YouGov found that Reform was running second in Wales, with 25 per cent of the vote, behind Plaid Cymru on 30 and Labour at 18.
Even so, it’s clear Labour needs to arrest Reform’s surge in popularity. Chancellor Rachel Reeves is likely to use her spending review speech on Wednesday to make a direct attack on Farage, contrasting Labour’s fiscal discipline with Reform’s “fantasy economics”. Reeves is also looking at how to bring down energy bills for industry and low-income households.
Farage rejected the suggestion that there was a pattern during his political life of falling out with the people around him, with a marvellously Don Corleone answer.
There’s no need to open any new blast furnaces when there’s pure steel like that lying around.
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