Have the Senedd parties an answer to Reform’s rust belt politics?

Jonathan Edwards

This week’s whirlwind visit to Port Talbot by Reform leader Nigel Farage gave a clear indication how the next year in Welsh politics will develop.

Mr Farage will swan into Wales with the UK media entourage in tow, make some bold statements and disappear back over the border after dispatching a stun grenade leaving the other parties dazed and confused.

The promise this week to reindustrialise south Wales was of course completely cynical, opportunistic, illiterate and has been eviscerated by commentators such as Owen Williams in Nation.

I won’t rehearse his arguments which were put more artfully than I could hope to achieve, but his points are completely valid and are a must read.

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President Trump

The speech by Mr Farage was straight out of the rust belt politics employed by President Trump and completely foreseeable. Its main significance however was to place the economy front and centre of the forthcoming election campaign and to be perfectly frank the response of the current Senedd parties was far from convincing.

Reform has taken a position on the economy that prises open a gaping wound – namely the failure of economic policy in the former coalfield areas of the south of our country since the employment associated with heavy industry was lost.

Port Talbot was the obvious location for the speech by Farage as the closure of the blast furnaces in the town was the final act in an economic story that has plagued the Valleys for decades.

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Past glories

Reform will fight the election promising a return to past glories, offering meaning to Valley communities instead of being commuter suburbs to Cardiff or Bristol. I would include Swansea here but the neglect of our second city by the government of our country is another story. The question is, what exactly is the policy answer of Reform’s opponents?

Plaid Cymru Cllr Rhys Mills in these pages wrote despairingly last month about the failure of successive Welsh governments when it came to overturning the economic fortunes of our post-industrial communities. He described the last 25 years as ‘managed decline masked as maturity’. This is the perception that Reform hopes to capitalise upon over the next 12 months and use as the foundation for its politics in the Senedd in the next term.

Looking at the quotes provided to the BBC in response by Labour, Plaid Cymru, Conservatives and the Lib Dems they may as well have been written by the same press spokesperson, attacking along the lines of ‘empty promises’ and ‘fantasy costings’. This is of course the case, but Reform will be delighted to create a division line of them against the rest, especially when their opponents failed to respond with one alternative policy proposal.

Timely

In this context therefore the Comprehensive Spending Review announcement of a 10 year £445m rail funding package for Wales was timely. Equating it to HS2 was understandable politics by Labour though misses the point completely about how HS2 impacts on the overall departmental comparability factor which is so damaging to Wales.

I would far prefer the full HS2 consequentials and a 100% Statement of Funding rating to an ad-hoc payment if I was a Welsh Government Minister. The announcement does at least give Labour Senedd hopefuls an opportunity to don their hard helmets and announce some projects to build a narrative that Wales is on the go.

At the end of the day, the only way to defeat the snake oil on offer by Reform is for the current Senedd parties to promote their own visions with a more credible solution to the deep social and economic problems faced in post-industrial Wales. A failure to respond positively could lead to the debate on the economy in Wales being framed on the chosen battleground determined by Mr Farage.

Jonathan Edwards was the MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr 2010-24