Reform UK commissions alternative steel strategy to challenge government policy

Reform UK has asked steel bosses to draw up an “alternative steel strategy” to rival recent government plans, stoking industry fears over a charm offensive by Nigel Farage’s party as it eyes gains in former Labour heartlands.

Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader, met a group of bosses shortly before Labour announced new steel tariffs in March and commissioned them to draft a competing plan that will include scrapping net zero policies.

The party is trying to harness growing anger at the government for high business energy bills, exacerbated by the Iran war, which are damaging steel companies and the wider manufacturing sector. Reform’s overtures have received a mixed reception across the industry.

One of the plan’s authors, the boss of a steel fabricating company, said Tice had made them feel Reform “cares about the industry” more than Labour. They added: “Labour is supposed to be there for the workers, not there to destroy it.”

However, another industry source said although Tice “understands that you need a steel industry” for issues such as national security, “whether they have any good policy ideas of what to actually do, I doubt that”.

They also said Reform’s anti-net zero position “does nothing for us”, adding: “Anything that makes us more dependent on gas is a bad thing.”

While Reform’s steel strategy has not yet been written, the push to woo the industry comes just weeks before the local elections on 7 May, in which the party is hoping to make gains in areas that have experienced decades of manufacturing job losses.

Wales is a particular focus. The party is polling almost level with Plaid Cymru in the race to become the largest party in the Senedd, according to YouGov, while Labour and the Conservatives are facing historic losses.

Reform’s Welsh leader, Dan Thomas, is due to visit the Tata Steel site at Port Talbot on Friday, the Guardian understands. The company announced about 2,500 job cuts in 2024 when it decided to switch from coal-fired blast furnaces to electric ones.

Farage also visited the south Wales plant last year and said he wanted to reintroduce blast furnaces to help the country “reindustrialise and grow”. However, the policy is not in Reform’s Welsh election manifesto and Farage appeared to row back on it earlier this month, admitting it “would be very expensive”.

Tice said: “Reform UK’s alternative steel strategy will focus on ensuring that the UK retains virgin steel-making capacity through ending net zero, targeted public support and using public procurement or trade policy to stop British steel making being undercut.”

He added that Labour’s plan for the industry “puts sticking plasters on a broken industrial strategy” and blamed green policies for increasing costs for steel firms.

High business energy costs are caused primarily by Britain’s reliance on natural gas for power generation, not net zero policy.

Tice and the Reform party chair, David Bull, held a lunch last year with bosses at UK Steel, and the party has maintained regular contact since, the Guardian understands.

The deputy leader has also been a fixture at sector parliamentary events and held a roundtable with manufacturers late last year.

A source close to Peter Kyle, the business secretary, said Reform was “obsessed with taking the UK backwards to an imagined past”, adding that ending net zero “would only hurt workers” by endangering clean energy jobs.

The government published its long-awaited steel strategy in March, introducing new import tariffs designed to protect domestic production from cheap foreign imports, particularly from China.

In a recent effort to tackle the high energy costs, the government has raised subsidies shielding steelmakers from costly network charges and promised a new exemption scheme from 2027 that would further reduce bills.

A government spokesperson said the new steel tariffs would make Britain “less reliant on steel made overseas”, adding that clean power was “the route to energy sovereignty and lower bills”.

Gareth Stace, the director general of UK Steel, said: “The steel industry is a vital component of the UK economy so we would expect Reform to be looking closely at the policies the party would want to put in place.”