Nigel Farage’s pitch for Welsh elections: bring back coalmining

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage speaks in Port Talbot, Wales. He says the UK ‘should produce our own coal’. Photograph: Matthew Horwood/Getty Images

Nigel Farage has demanded the reopening of domestic coalmines to provide fuel for new blast furnaces, arguing that Welsh people would happily return to mining if the pay was sufficiently high.

Speaking at an event in Port Talbot, the south Wales town traditionally associated with the steel industry, the Reform UK leader said it was in the “national interest” to have a guaranteed supply of steel, as well as UK-produced fuel for the furnaces, a close echo of Donald Trump’s repeated pledges to return heavy industry to the US.