The cutting term Eluned Morgan used to describe Nigel Farage
Wales' First Minister didn't bite her tongue
Eluned Morgan speaking at the Welsh Labour conference in Llandudno
(Image: Getty Images )
Wales' First Minister Eluned Morgan has said Nigel Farage is an "idiot" for suggesting that the blast furnaces at Tata's Port Talbot plant could be reopened. The Reform UK leader visited Port Talbot last month and announced his first Welsh-specific policies.
One was looking at the reopening of some mines, the other was to reopen the blast furnaces at Port Talbot. That was something experts - and even Mr Farage himself - said would cost billions of pounds because once the blast furnaces were turned off last year, it is all but impossible to turn them back on.
The blast furnaces were closed as part of plan by Indian steel giant Tata to switch to an electric arc furnace. It had said the site was losing £1m a day.
The First Minister was being interviewed by Sky News' political editor Beth Rigby as part of the Electoral Dysfunction podcast. When Ms Rigby asked what she thought when she heard that pledge, the First Minister replied the Reform UK leader was "an idiot".
"I thought he's an idiot who doesn't understand how a blast furnace works and clearly doesn't understand, we don't have the money to do that in Wales, there's no way we can reopen a blast furnace in Wales," the First Minister said.
"He's peddling fantasies to people," she said.
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"I think, I hope, that people will have between now and the next Senedd election to dig a bit deeper in terms of what their answers are, not their questions, but what are their answers. We all have questions, but what are the answers? If you want to be in power, you have to have answers," she said.
Asked if she was to blame for voters turning away from Welsh Labour because of a malaise against all politicians, Mrs Morgan said: "I think we've got a lot of work to do to get workers back. I think it's important we're authentic and clear with people about what we stand for. I think we have to lead with our values, we're about bringing communities together, not dividing them and I think that's what Reform is interested in, dividing people."
In the podcast, the journalist asked her to score the UK Labour government's performance in its first year out of ten, something she couldn't do. You can read more on that here.
The news channel had asked a Welsh focus group to rank the performance of Keir Starmer's administration out of ten. Before Beth Rigby told her the answer, she asked the First Minister what she would rank them, but she declined to answer.
"Oh My God. That's a big question isn't it. It's tough. Oh My God. It's a difficult question and I'm not going to answer it because I'll get into all sorts of trouble if I do that," she said. For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here
Polling for Sky News released this week by More in Common showed when people were asked how they would vote at the Senedd election in May, Reform came top with 28% of the vote, followed closely by Plaid Cymru, on 26%. Labour was third with 23%.
The Conservatives would go from being the official opposition in the Senedd to having 10% of the vote.
The polling, of 883 people carried out between June 18 and July 3, shows less than half (48%) of Labour's 2024 voters would back the party in a Senedd election if it were held today.
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