Labour's dishonesty is no less reprehensible than that of Farage

Martin Shipton

If we expose one form of political dishonesty, we’re duty bound to apply the same standards across the board.

The rise of Reform UK provides an unedifying case study of how millions of people can be deceived into supporting an unworthy cause.

But understanding that does not exonerate from responsibility other political parties whose dishonesty and incompetence has helped create the Reform monster.

Nigel Farage has made a career out of exploiting people’s grievances. As an insurgent politician, he began by depicting the European Union as some kind of totalitarian superstate intent on imposing its malevolent will on the people of the UK, who according to his narrative had been uniquely singled out for mistreatment and exploitation.

This grotesque misrepresentation was allowed to gain currency by an onslaught of distorted information from Little Englander news outlets and later via social media. The spurious notion that the UK was forced by the EU to adopt laws that were against the interests of its citizens was easily exposed when its proponents were asked to identify the offending pieces of legislation. But those who were determined to believe the nonsense persisted in doing so.

Today we can appreciate the irony that it is Farage’s ally Donald Trump who is creating a dystopian hell of the kind he would have us believe the EU had in store for us.

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Port Talbot

The Reform UK leader’s recent appearance at Port Talbot, at which he incoherently suggested that a Reform-led Welsh Government would be able to reopen the blast furnaces that were shut down by Tata last year, was a blatant exercise in political dishonesty by an opportunist without restraint.

While those with a knowledge of the steel industry realised he was mouthing nonsense, many were doubtless swept along by his nostalgia for an age when school leavers could walk into well-paid jobs for life.

Farage wants people to believe that he can magic up a fantasy past that they had given up as irretrievable. It just so happened that when the steelworks were functioning at full volume, and when the coal mines he’d also like to reopen were the main employer, trafficked migrants of a different ethnicity were not, as a rule, arriving in Britain on small boats.

This, of course, is a further cause for grievance among the demographic whose votes Farage will hope to garner at next year's Senedd election in places where few, if any, of the boat people have actually pitched up.

His visit to Port Talbot also perhaps gave us a glimpse of the kind of Reform Senedd Member likely to be occupying the newly expanded hi-tech Siambr in Cardiff Bay after the 2026 election.

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Anointment

Emulating their opportunistic Messiah were two formerly Independent councillors from Merthyr Tydfil who doubtless believe their future electoral success to be assured thanks to their anointment by Farage.

He was not embarrassed to introduce this unprepossessing and inarticulate pair, presumably regarding them with condescension as typical of the voters he is trying to woo.

It’s fair to say that it takes chutzpah of an exceptional degree for an avowed devotee of Margaret Thatcher who in the past has spoken with indifference of pit closures to con people into believing he’ll reopen mines in the south Wales Valleys.

It’s all nonsense, of course. He’s promising to improve public services while simultaneously cutting £150bn per year in public spending. When challenged, he spouts soundbites about ending spending on climate change initiatives and scrapping diversity posts.

Sooner or later Farage’s bubble will burst - as it has done before when he has fallen out with others in the previous parties he’s led. It’s already happening with Reform, although whether the party will implode before next year’s election is an open question.

Farage’s dishonesty is, of course, transparent to anyone who looks beyond the Facebook posts and slick videos. But that doesn’t excuse other parties from their acts of dishonesty.

Spending review

It’s approaching a year since Labour took power at Westminster. This week Chancellor Rachel Reeves delivered her Spending Review. We were told by both UK Labour and Welsh Labour that it represented a major boost for Wales’ economy and its citizens. First Minister Eluned Morgan and Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens resumed the sororal romance that had temporarily gone sour when Jo falsely claimed that Eluned was fine with the welfare cuts.

But it didn’t take long for the “on message” message to unravel. Analysis undertaken at Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre demonstrated that the growth in the Welsh Government’s budget was lower than it had been under the Tory UK government that was booted out of office last year.

Equally, the new allocation of rail funding was shown to be nowhere near enough to offset the loss to Wales through classifying HS2 as an “England and Wales” project. Joy had quickly been dampened when it became clear that the extra money was over a 10-year period.

So far as Wales is concerned, it is wrong to characterise the Spending Review as a triumph. Having sought to do so is an act of dishonesty on the part of Welsh Labour and its UK boss party.

It may be a subtler form of dishonesty than that engaged in by Nigel Farage and Reform, but that doesn’t make it less reprehensible.

Gloss

It’s understandable that parties will try to put the best gloss on statistics, and it’s easy to make big numbers sound impressive when they’re not contextualised. Most of us don’t have the numerical competence or fiscal knowledge to make competent judgments about changes in government spending.

I’m comfortable to leave the heavy lifting to the Fiscal Analysis Team at the Wales Governance Centre and believe them when they state that our public sector is heading for more tough times.

I don’t feel any better when I realise that Labour is spinning me a line.

I’d rather have political honesty than soft soap. That would be a sign of true leadership.

Keir Starmer, Jo Stevens and the rest of the UK Cabinet know that Brexit has been a disaster and that the best way to grow the economy would be to return to the single market. But they don’t want to say it because they fear the political consequences.

Politicians who fail to do the right thing and duck out of leadership have got us into the mess we’re in.

Ultimately their form of dishonesty puts them on the same moral level as Farage. Indeed, they’ve helped him attain the poll lead he currently enjoys.