‘They feel betrayed’: how Reform UK is targeting votes in Britain’s manufacturing heartlands | Economics

When Nigel Farage called for the nationalisation of British Steel on a visit to the Scunthorpe steelworks this spring, it was a marked change in direction for a man who had spent almost all of his political career campaigning for a smaller, Thatcherite state.

Two years earlier, he had questioned why British taxpayers’ money should be thrown into keeping the fires of the very same blast furnaces burning. Back in 2018 he told an interviewer: “I supported Margaret Thatcher’s modernisation and reforms of the economy. It was painful for some people, but it had to happen.”

After gaining a fifth MP and sweeping to a string of victories in England’s local elections last month, his Reform UK is coming for Labour in places Keir Starmer’s party once considered its traditional…