Nigel Farage is a “political fraud and hypocrite” who is “cosplaying” as a working-class champion in order to win votes at this week’s local elections, the UK’s most senior union chief has warned.
In a stark rejection of the Reform UK leader’s attempts to court the trade unions, Paul Nowak, general secretary of the TUC, said there were “massive contradictions” in Farage’s positions on issues ranging from workers’ rights, the economy, industry and Brexit.
Ahead of this week’s local elections, in which Reform is expected to gain hundreds of seats across Labour’s post-industrial heartlands in the Midlands and north of England, he said he understood the disillusionment with mainstream politics but warned that the rightwing party was not the answer.
In an interview with the Guardian, Nowak urged Labour not to learn the wrong lessons from the anticipated results by pitching to the right, telling Keir Starmer he “should not have a crisis of confidence” when he has a huge parliamentary majority of 170 to drive through change.
In recent weeks, Farage has parked Reform’s tanks firmly on Labour’s electoral lawn, calling for British Steel and failed water companies to be nationalised, openly courting the unions and delivering a speech in County Durham, the spiritual home of the miners, in which he vowed to “reindustrialise Britain”.
Nowak warned voters tempted by Reform UK not to have the wool pulled over their eyes, even though they were impatient for change. “They got 4 million votes at the last election, of course there’s a lot of disillusionment with mainstream politics,” he acknowledged.
“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 criticism of Farage represents the most personal attack yet on the Reform UK boss from within the labour movement in 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 said.
“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 opposed the employment rights bill, which includes day one sick pay and new rights to parental leave and flexible working, even though a TUC poll found it was the government’s most popular policy among Reform voters. The bill goes to the House of Lords on Tuesday.
MPs across the main political parties believe that Reform could struggle if they do win the two metro mayoral contests in Greater Lincolnshire and Hull and East Yorkshire as some polls suggest.
“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 chief said.
“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 also accused Farage of “playing fast and loose with racist rhetoric” in the past over Brexit and immigration and suggested his “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” about a police conspiracy after the Southport killings had “kindled the fires of violence” on the streets.
But he distanced himself from the stance of the UK’s largest teaching union which has called Reform “far-right and racist”, saying: “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 said that Farage had pushed a “very divisive narrative” on migration, after the TUC argued that the UK should forge much closer ties with Europe amid an increasingly volatile and unpredictable global economy.
But Nowak also had a warning for Starmer. “Don’t learn the wrong lessons from what happens in the local election results on 1 May,” he said. “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 said the government should stick to its Labour values to deliver on public services, workers’ rights, industrial strategy and the cost of living.
“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 said: “Workers are ripping up their trade union memberships to join Reform. It’s no wonder Paul Nowak is lashing out.”
