Eluned Morgan gave three reasons why people should not vote for Nigel Farage
Eluned Morgan gave three reasons why people should not vote for Nigel Farage
The Welsh First Minister joined Keir Starmer in criticising Nigel Farage's party Reform UK
First Minister of Wales Eluned Morgan during the 2025 Welsh Labour party conference
(Image: Getty Images )
Wales' First Minister Eluned Morgan has told voters not to vote for Reform in the upcoming Senedd election. She said the danger from Nigel Farage's party is "real".
In her speech, she cited three specific reasons that she said Reform would be bad for Wales. She claimed the party would wreck the NHS by privatising it, she said Nigel Farage's promises on steel and Port Talbot were a fantasy, and thirdly she claimed that Reform UK's interest in Wales was artificial.
Speaking to WalesOnline after her speech, she went further.
The First Minister: "The danger from Reform is real. There's a real threat to the NHS, today people know they can go to their local pharmacy and get their prescription for free, that could end with Reform.
"Nigel Farage is on record as saying he is interested in introducing an insurance-based model for health, and that means people who can't afford it won't be able to go to the local doctors. All these things are real. There's a threat to workers' rights, and there's a threat when it comes to jobs and cuts.
"They are not committed to public service. They talk about cutting waste, we've had years of austerity so there isn't much left to cut, so what they're talking about is going after peoples jobs, 300,000 people work in the public sector in Wales and many of those will be cut if Reform gets into power."
Article continues below
In her speech, she said Mr Farage's pledge to reopen the blast furnaces at Tata's Port Talbot plant, were "fantasy."
"While Nigel Farage is in Port Talbot and peddled fantasies about sending people's grandchildren down coal mines and reopening blast furnaces, we're dealing with the reality they left behind - the scars of decades of Tory neglect, the cost of industrial decline. We're not romanticising the past - we're cleaning it up," she said. For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here .
She said Reform is a "force of division". She added: "With Plaid, you get risk. With the Tories, you get ruin. With Reform, you get a wrecking ball. We cannot - and we will not - let that happen. Not on our watch. Not in our Wales."
The Welsh Labour leader said: "We will build a nation ready to take advantage of the Artificial Intelligence revolution, a tool that can improve lives. Because the race is on - and Wales won't be left behind. I want our country, and our people, match-fit for the future.
"Our nation powered the Industrial Revolution. Pioneers of coal, steel, and steam. We powered an Empire…but those days are well gone. Nigel Farage may want to drag us back to that past - but I'm focused, unapologetically, on the future.
"Reform say they're worried about Artificial Intelligence. Well, their interest in Wales is certainly artificial - and when it comes to policy? We're still waiting for the intelligence," she said.
Asked if there was a danger that continuing to talk about Reform glamorised the party - which currently has no seats in the Senedd. "There is nothing glamorous about Reform," she said. "They're really dangerous and it's important we point out the danger to people in our communities.
"It's not just a football you can kick to get at the party of government, there are real implications to the public in this country if Reform gets into power.
"It's very very serious. You'll see investment start to dry up, you'll see dislocation when it comes to public service, they have no experience of being in power," she said.
Article continues below
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
29 minutes ago
- BBC News
Nigel Farage's Reform UK's rise in London 'a threat to main parties'
Is Reform UK on the rise in London?The party, led by Nigel Farage, says it has quadrupled its membership in the year since the general election, where they won five seats, including one for Farage in UK had the third-highest vote share in the country at the 2024 election - just over 14% - with half a million more votes than the Liberal Democrats. According to polling, London has a smaller share of Reform voters, but it has a higher share of people who say they would consider voting Reform in the future. Not far from the capital, Reform has control of Kent County Council, which had long been UK also has its first London Assembly member, Alex Wilson, who was elected in May 2024. London politics expert Prof Tony Travers told the Politics London programme that the party "could do very well indeed in some of the outer London boroughs, particularly I would say those that voted Leave in the Brexit referendum, so Barking and Dagenham, Havering, Bexley, Hillingdon, even Sutton".He added: "Those are the places I think they could well do a lot of damage to the incumbent parties."Laila Cunningham, a Westminster city councillor who last week defected from the Conservatives to Reform UK, told Politics London that her residents "would always point to how they were let down by the previous Conservative administration and how they wouldn't vote for them".She added: "Honesty, I think, is really lacking in politics now and I just couldn't defend their record." Cunningham said Reform UK were "serious about getting this country back on track, they're serious about cutting immigration, cutting crime, cutting waste, cutting tax and people say that's right wing but that used to be mainstream a few years ago".Deirdre Costigan, Labour MP for Ealing Southall, told Politics London that Reform UK's "key policy seems to be a massive tax cut for the rich".She added: "How are they going to pay for that tax cut? The only way of paying for that is to cut public services. So, we'll have less police on the streets of London and we won't have an NHS."Conservative London Assembly member Alessandro Georgiou told the programme that Farage "is a tax-and-spend socialist, if you take what he says". Watch the full Politics London programme on BBC iPlayer.
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Reform the NHS, not our shopping baskets
This week, the NHS will publish its 10 Year Health Plan. The most we can expect from this exercise in Soviet-style planning is tinkering around the edges of an edifice that was erected when Joseph Stalin ruled in Moscow. By 2035, the end date of this 10-year plan, the country will almost certainly be unable to afford the NHS in its present form – if, indeed, it hasn't collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions by then. Unable to address the fundamental problems of the NHS, the dirigistes of Whitehall have come up with a new plan to direct us how to lead our lives – telling us what we should or shouldn't be allowed to choose to put in our shopping baskets. Supermarkets will be expected to cut 100 calories from the average shopping basket by limiting sales of sugary and salty snacks or other 'junk food'. Ever since Napoleon Bonaparte sneered at England as 'a nation of shopkeepers', we have worn his insult as a badge of honour. We are proud to be a people who earn our living by trade and we cherish the liberties that are the glory of a commercial society. Even those of us who are not shopkeepers are at least customers. So little does this Labour Government know the British people that it is about to resort to distinctly Napoleonic measures to punish both retailers and consumers. Yet previous attempts to control consumption have never succeeded in changing enduring patterns of behaviour rooted in human nature. It is outrageous that officials feel empowered to tell us what we can, and cannot, eat. The public is being infantilised and robbed of agency. Centuries have passed since Parliament abandoned sumptuary laws that prohibited the lower orders from imitating the luxurious dress of the aristocracy. But the bureaucratic mind is obdurate in its disdain for popular tastes in food and drink. Combined with Labour's instinct to meddle, along with its insatiable fiscal appetite, it is no surprise that, as we report today, a modern version of the sumptuary laws is about to land on an unsuspecting nation. Obesity is a genuine and growing problem, but, hitherto, all attempts to address it by fiscal means have failed. The latest obesity tax – supermarkets will be fined if they don't reduce the nation's calorie intake, and this will inevitably be passed on to consumers – now emerging from the bowels of the Health Department and the Treasury, claims to be aimed directly at our waistlines. In reality, like all its predecessors, it will target our wallets. There is a certain grim irony in the fact that this policy should have been adopted at the same time as the decision by the NHS to prescribe the weight-loss drug semaglutide (contained in Ozempic and Wegovy). It is fairly obvious that the underlying rationale of the new regulations is less about obesity than about the Government's failure to control spending. No doubt figures will be trotted out about how many lives will be saved by cutting consumption of ultra-processed foods or any other category of comestible that attracts the ire of the health bureaucrats. But the truth is that new rules are being concocted because the Government is running scared of its own MPs, who have effectively imposed a veto on cuts in welfare spending. What would genuinely make a difference to life expectancy and health outcomes would, of course, be a radical reform of the NHS, a more active population, and a reduction in the numbers wasting their lives on benefits. Rachel Reeves has just poured another £29 billion into the health service, without any clear cost-benefit calculation. Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, is intelligent enough to know that he has inherited an obsolete behemoth that is crying out for root-and-branch reform. But building a new consensus for a new NHS would require the Labour Party to rethink its assumptions about the social contract, as well as the role of insurance and individual responsibility. The original 1946 NHS Act created 'a comprehensive health service designed to secure improvement in the physical and mental health of the people of England and Wales'. Today, the nation's health is not safe in the hands of a dysfunctional Labour Party that would rather do anything – even introducing an assisted-dying service – than take on the overdue task of making the NHS fit for purpose. These new directives are at best a displacement activity, at worst an act of fiscal condescension. A nation of shopkeepers deserves better than to be bossed around by its own government.
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Judge me on my record, 18-year-old Warwickshire council leader says
An 18-year-old acting leader of a county council has urged people to judge him on his actions rather than his age. George Finch took temporary charge of Warwickshire County Council after the Reform UK leader stood down on Wednesday. He now oversees a local authority with £1.5bn of assets and a revenue budget of about £500m. The unusual situation has sparked debate, with his party calling it a proud moment and Labour and the Conservatives questioning his experience. Finch, a councillor for Bedworth and the local Reform UK chairman, has not ruled out running for the top job on a permanent basis. He said his track record was pretty good. Reform made unprecedented gains in Warwickshire in May's local elections, mainly at the expense of the Conservatives. They became the largest party and formed a minority Howard, who had been leader for 41 days, said he was quitting as council leader with "much regret" due to health reasons. Finch had been his deputy and will serve as interim until a new leader has been chosen, as per the council's constitution. Finch, who also serves as portfolio holder for children and families, said he hoped people would be able to see past his age. "The people of Bedworth Central elected me with a thumping majority of 1,100," he told the Local Democracy Reporting Service. "Don't judge me on my age, judge me on what I do. At the moment, my track record is pretty good."As party chairman I got 13 out of 13 candidates elected. "All of the things we needed to do to prepare for the elections, they speak volumes." Jaymey McIvor, an Essex county councillor and Reform UK local government spokesperson, praised Finch for taking over and getting on with the job. He said Warwickshire councillors were focused on issues such as fixing potholes and improving access to skills in deprived areas. "I was able to see councillor Finch in action," he told the BBC's Politics Midlands programme. "He was very professional."I think we should actually be quite proud that a young British man, who has been elected to office to represent his community, has found himself in a very senior position."Labour MP for Birmingham Edgbaston Preet Gill said the people of Warwickshire "frankly deserve better". "This is not work experience," she said. "This is not about learning on the job. "With all due respect, at 18 you will not know how to deliver adult social care, children social care [and] SEND services." Mike Wood, the Conservative MP for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire, was more apprehensive. He said he had previously been a local councillor, and it was a tough job."It really would take a quite remarkable 18-year-old to go straight from sixth form to running a large local authority with a half a billion pound budget with no previous experience," he said. Watch Politics Midlands on BBC One in the West Midlands at 10:00 BST on Sunday. The show will be available on iPlayer BBC Coventry & Warwickshire on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
