Port Talbot, home to the UK’s largest steelworks, exemplifies Labour’s struggle to reconnect with working-class voters in South Wales. The town lost 2,000 jobs in 2024 after Tata Steel shut down coal-fired blast furnaces, with replacement electric furnaces now delayed until 2028 or 2029. Labour fell to third place in Wales’s parliamentary elections in May, trailing Plaid Cymru and Reform UK. Welsh First Minister Rhun ap Iorwerth has urged Westminster to consider nationalising the steelworks, calling it a strategic industry for the UK’s future.
Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands reports from Port Talbot, Wales.
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