Nigel Farage is a political fraud ‘cosplaying’ as working-class champion, TUC leader says

Nigel Farage is a “political fraud and hypocrite” who’s “cosplaying” as a working-class champion with a view to win votes at this week’s native elections, the United Kingdom’s maximum senior union leader has warned.

In a stark rejection of the Reform UK chief’s makes an attempt to court docket the business unions, Paul Nowak, normal secretary of the TUC, stated there have been “massive contradictions” in Farage’s positions on problems starting from employees’ rights, the economic system, business and Brexit.

Ahead of this week’s native elections, through which Reform is predicted to achieve loads of seats throughout Labour’s post-industrial heartlands within the Midlands and north of England, he stated he understood the disillusionment with mainstream politics however warned that the rightwing birthday celebration used to be now not the solution.

In an interview with the Guardian, Nowak steered Labour now not to be informed the improper classes from the predicted effects through pitching to the best, telling Keir Starmer he “should not have a crisis of confidence” when he has an enormous parliamentary majority of 170 to power via exchange.

In contemporary weeks, Farage has parked Reform’s tanks firmly on Labour’s electoral garden, calling for British Steel and failed water corporations to be nationalised, brazenly relationship the unions and handing over a speech in County Durham, the non secular house of the miners, through which he vowed to “reindustrialise Britain”.

Nowak warned electorate tempted through Reform UK to not have the wool pulled over their eyes, although they have been impatient for exchange. “They got 4 million votes at the last election, of course there’s a lot of disillusionment with mainstream politics,” he said.

“But there isn’t a bandwagon that the fella isn’t prepared to jump aboard if he thinks it’s gonna result in more votes. I think people will see that lack of consistency, lack of political honesty, lack of coherence. He promises all things to all people.

“I get why people might be attracted in the short term. I think it’s partly my job to say to people, well, don’t just listen to what he says, look at what he does. He’s directly voting against the interests of millions of working people.”

Nowak’s grievance of Farage represents essentially the most non-public assault but at the Reform UK boss from inside the labour motion within the run-up to the elections. He described him as a “political fraud and a hypocrite” who “makes Liz Truss look like a politician with integrity”.

“I don’t think he really wants a sensible relationship with trade unions any more than I think he really cares about the interests of British workers or industry or those working-class communities,” he stated.

“This is Nigel Farage, public school-educated ex-metals trader cosplaying as a champion of the working class. There’s a massive contradiction between what he says and what he actually does in practice.”

He added: “The fella who says he stands up for British industry is hanging on the coat tails of Donald Trump whose tariffs will put at risk thousands of good quality jobs in Britain’s manufacturing heartlands.

“His driving through of Brexit did lasting harm to the UK economy, including those jobs in engineering and in manufacturing. He hasn’t got a coherent economic plan.”

Reform has adversarial the employment rights invoice, which contains day one unwell pay and new rights to parental depart and versatile operating, although a TUC ballot discovered it used to be the federal government’s most well liked coverage amongst Reform electorate. The invoice is going to the House of Lords on Tuesday.

MPs throughout the primary political events imagine that Reform may fight in the event that they do win the 2 metro mayoral contests in Greater Lincolnshire and Hull and East Yorkshire as some polls counsel.

“He and his party have never run anything – a local council, a parish council. He’s literally spent a lifetime doing what he accuses others of doing, which is riding the political gravy train,” the TUC leader stated.

“I think they’ll be found wanting because it’s such a ragtag coalition. I don’t think there is any real political coherence and they’ll have to actually prove how they’re going to make the sums add up.”

Nowak additionally accused Farage of “playing fast and loose with racist rhetoric” previously over Brexit and immigration and instructed his “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” a couple of police conspiracy after the Southport killings had “kindled the fires of violence” at the streets.

But he distanced himself from the stance of the United Kingdom’s biggest instructing union which has known as Reform “far-right and racist”, pronouncing: “I don’t think for one minute that the vast majority of people who vote Reform are in any way racist at all, but there are clearly racist elements in that party.”

He stated that Farage had driven a “very divisive narrative” on migration, after the TUC argued that the United Kingdom must forge a lot nearer ties with Europe amid an increasingly more risky and unpredictable international economic system.

But Nowak additionally had a caution for Starmer. “Don’t learn the wrong lessons from what happens in the local election results on 1 May,” he stated. “I don’t think lurching to the right is the answer. You’ll never out-Reform Reform. The solution doesn’t lie in aping Farage.”

Instead, he stated the federal government must keep on with its Labour values to ship on public products and services, employees’ rights, business technique and the price of residing.

“That’s the thing that will make a real difference. You shouldn’t be suffering any sort of crisis of confidence with a 170-odd seat majority, you need to get on with the job of delivering the change that people voted for.

“And I think that would be the best way to shut up Farage and those yapping on the populist right.”

A spokesperson for Reform UK stated: “Workers are ripping up their trade union memberships to join Reform. It’s no wonder Paul Nowak is lashing out.”