'Labour are a sick joke and don't care about British Steel - they're simply scared of me'

I have spent the last two weeks travelling right across the country in anticipation of the local and mayoral elections on May 1. The reception Reform UK is getting across the so-called in places like Durham, Doncaster and Ashfield has been astonishing.

This week stormed to victory in the Longdendale council by-election, Labour's safest ward in Greater Manchester and deep in their heartlands. Just a few days before, I visited the steelworks in Scunthorpe with my Deputy Leader and Dame Andrea Jenkyns. We saw the blast furnaces and then went for a pint down at nearby Wetherspoons to a great reception from local steelworkers.

Labour are in a panic over the rise of Reform UK, so it is no coincidence that the House of Commons was recalled for an emergency sitting to discuss the future of British Steel yesterday.

If the Government wanted to keep the blast furnaces going in Scunthorpe they could have done so at any point over the course of the last few months. The reason they've chosen a Saturday sitting is a theatrical attempt to show the country that they are on the side of working people. Rather a sick joke, in my opinion.

That said, the fact that the coal and iron pallets needed to keep the blast furnace from closing down have now been ordered is at least a reprieve. For many of those concerned faces that I saw in Scunthorpe last week, today will come with a sense of relief.
Reform UK attempted to put down an amendment in Parliament to fully nationalise British Steel, and bring this vital strategic asset back into public ownership, but it was sadly not accepted.

I am sure Labour will follow our lead again before long. Only once this is done and taken out of the hands of bad actors will there be any prospect of moving on and finding new ownership and a new direction. But we need to understand why we're in this mess to begin with.

Beginning with David Cameron, a series of failed Conservative governments decided that our strategic future lay with China. They could not have been more wrong on every single issue. Jingye, the Chinese company involved here, were described even yesterday by Labour MPs in the House of Commons as not acting in good faith.

I cannot tell you how ridiculous it is that so many of our national strategic assets have been sold to Chinese companies - even including their involvement in nuclear energy in the south-west of England.

The most extraordinary aspect of what we saw today in the Commons were the Labour MPs, standing up one after another, as if they were the great champions of British industry and the British worker. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The insane net zero obsession that has now overtaken virtually all of our political parties has led us to have the most expensive industrial energy prices in the world. There is an industrial massacre and it has been going on for decades. For now, Scunthorpe has been saved.

But remember that Tata Steel in Port Talbot, South Wales, went last year. And in the North East of England, 10 years ago in Redcar, several thousand people lost their jobs. The production of that steel moved to India, only to be produced under lower environmental standards, and the products then shipped back to us! You don't need me to tell you that this is insane.
We are in the midst of a cult that is de-industrialising Britain.

All I can promise you is that my party, in any level of government, will fight against this and make sure that we have a strong manufacturing base in this country. Given the increasingly dangerous geopolitical situation, this is just common sense. Reform UK will re-industrialise Britain.

As for Keir Starmer and the rest of his front bench, they have simply carried on from the disasters of the last Conservative government who wrote net zero legislation into law. They are complicit in the de-industrialisation of our nation. It is my belief that the Commons is now as out of touch with the rest of the country on net zero as they were on Brexit.

In 2016, the people voted against an establishment who were in lockstep with the interests of big business. This feels very similar. It is my prediction that if this Labour Government does not change its industrial policies, especially in terms of energy, then Reform UK will form the next government in 2029. It is no wonder that Keir Starmer is dancing to our tune.