Reform UK's mask will drop if voters spot these glaring contradictions

Reform UK's sudden enthusiasm for steel nationalisation is like a fox promising to guard the henhouse - suspicious, performative, and not to be trusted. Their advocacy to bring British Steel into public hands might sound, on the surface, like them advocating for the working class. A bold, blue-collar turn from a party often seen as the parliamentary wing of a WhatsApp rant. But scratch the surface, and the familiar contradictions start to show.

Let's start with the basics: this is a party that didn't back the Employment Rights Bill. You know, The one meant to stop workers being sacked on the spot, give zero-hours staff a fairer deal, and keep bosses from treating contracts like gym memberships, easy to cancel, impossible to understand. Not backing that is hardly the behaviour of a party newly converted to the cause of worker power. So why this sudden love affair with the steel industry?

The answer is simple: optics. Reform UK is in the market for working-class credibility, and there's nothing quite as solid and iconic as steel. It conjures up images of graft, grit, and British pride - coal-smudged forearms and molten metal, the sort of thing you see in a 1980s union poster or a beer advert.

Nationalisation, in this context, isn't about policy. It's about posture. But this isn't a party with a track record of backing workers. Quite the opposite. Their economic instincts have always leaned hard in the direction of deregulation, low taxes, and letting "the market" sort it out. Their closest allies are hedge funders, not steelworkers.

These are the same characters that have spent years railing against unions, cheerleading for deregulation, and backing the sort of labour market flexibility that makes employment rights feel like optional extras. Reform UK has always stood with the bosses - so when they start talking about saving jobs, it's worth asking: And whose jobs, exactly? Not yours.

If you're going to get into the nationalisation game, you need to bring more than a slogan. Reform's quickly scrapped out plan has no conditions for worker control, no mention of long-term industrial strategy, no vision for what a publicly-owned steel
industry would do differently - other than not be foreign. It's less a policy than a reflexive reaction: 'British good, foreign bad.' That's not economics, that's vibes-based governance.

Nationalisation can be a powerful tool. When done right, with unions at the table, workers on the boards, and long-term investment at its heart, it protects jobs, builds resilience, and puts strategic industries to work for the public good. But that's not what Reform's offering. There's no plan for worker voices, no accountability, and no vision beyond the headlines.

And this isn't happening in a vacuum. When real, serious proposals come forward to improve the lives of working people, like the Employment Rights Bill, or plans to give more security to gig economy workers, Reform is nowhere to be found.

Silent, or more regularly, hostile. Yet here they are, trying to cosplay as champions of the working class. It's like Domitian's Palace on the Palatine, grand on the outside, but built to impress senators, not serve Roman citizens. Reform's steel pitch is all spectacle, no substance.

Let's be honest: if Reform UK had their way, most of what's left of the state would be shrink-wrapped and sold to the highest bidder. Public services hollowed out.

Worker protections "modernised" and destroyed. Trade unions sidelined. The nationalisation of steel is an outlier not because they've changed, but because they think it'll play well in Scunthorpe.

It's not hard to imagine their real endgame here. Nationalise steel not to empower workers or safeguard strategic industry, but to dress up nationalism as economic justice.

To pretend that flying the flag over a furnace is the same thing as long-term, structural reform. But that's not how any of this works.

Real support for working class people takes more than a press conference and a nostalgic soundbite. It means backing decent pay. Secure contracts. Proper training. Strong unions. Public services that aren't being run into the ground. Not just saying "British jobs for British workers" and calling it a day.

If Reform were serious about the steel industry, they'd be serious about workers across the board. Not just the symbolic ones, the ones that photograph well in campaign videos. But the carers, the couriers, the cleaners, the invisible backbone of the country. And they're not. They never have been.

The truth is, this is all just another political costume change. A hard hat over a silk suit. A party that's spent years arguing against the very things working people need, now claiming to be their last best hope. The irony writes itself.

Reform isn't here to protect steel. They're here to mine votes. And once this newscycle is over, their hi-vis goes back in the cupboard, and the fox trots back out of the henhouse, job done.