Hywel Dda health board's fragile services need urgent change

Hospital services across a Welsh health board could reorganised because they are so fragile.Hywel Dda health board has included critical care, stroke services, eye care and urology among those in need of urgent attention.Among the options would be to halve the number of acute stroke units and centralise planned urology cases and eye care.A number of options will be given to the public, though the health board said it would welcome alternative suggestions as there was no preferred option.It is understood each option put forward would come with a cost implication, but would be less than the current rising costs.
Hywel Dda said changes were needed "because of the risks to them being able to continue to offer safe, quality services or timely care".The four main hospitals in the area, which covers Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion, are Prince Philip in Llanelli, Glangwili in Carmarthen, Withybush in Haverfordwest and Bronglais in Aberystwyth.The health board said clinical teams were spread across multiple sites, over a wide geographic area, and there is an "over-reliance on a small number of individuals".The nine areas deemed most fragile are: Critical careDermatologyEmergency general surgeryEndoscopyOphthalmologyOrthopaedicsRadiologyStrokeUrology
The health board is not alone in facing challenges of reducing waiting times for treatment.At a time when parts of Wales still have patients waiting longer than two years for care, it has removed those waits entirely, but still has more than 12,000 waiting longer than one year.Staffing issues have improved predominantly due to the recruitment of international nurses, taking band five vacancies down from 280 whole-time equivalent to just 18.The health board said that had substantially reduced its agency spend, but vacancies remained in other areas of its workforce.Plans to update services were first drawn up in 2018 and while the pandemic increased demand, Hywel Dda has also had to contend with significant capital costs associated with issues around reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) at Withybush Hospital.A new hospital is planned for the area, but will not be built for at least 10 years after delays as well as the impact of inflation on construction costs.
Since the pandemic, there has also been an increased emphasis on regional working among health boards in Wales, meaning pressures can be spread across regions, though that also creates fresh logistical challenges.Meanwhile backlog maintenance costs for an ageing estate continuing to rise, meaning doing nothing is not an option.A previous report stated maintenance costs had increased from £60m to £255m since 2018, with £42m categorised as "high risk". Glangwili and Withybush have the "most significant backlogs" at £90m and £72m respectively.Any changes would be closely inspected by patients who are likely to face longer travel times for some services as a consequence, though the plans also include expansion in some areas and a greater role for primary and community services.A public consultation on the options will be held over the summer with final plans expected to be put to the board by November.

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BBC News

an hour ago

• BBC News

'People should die naturally' - mixed views on assisted dying debate

MPs agreed this week to back a bill that would legalise assisted dying in England and Wales for some terminally ill adults. The BBC visited the Spen Valley constituency of Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, who proposed the bill, to hear what local people thought of the historic vote. The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which was approved with a majority of 23 votes, would allow terminally ill adults with six months or less to live to get medical assistance to end their own lives - if eligible. It will now go to the Lords, where it is likely to face further 52, does not support the bill."People should be born and they should die naturally," she said."When you get to the end of your life and you're in so much pain, a bit like I am, you have days where you wish you weren't here and then you have days when you wish you were. "I don't think it's right that people should end their own lives." Leadbeater told the BBC she was "over the moon" after the bill was backed by 314 votes to 291."I know what this means for terminally ill people and their loved ones," she week also marks nine years since the murder of Leadbeater's sister, Batley and Spen MP Jo Cox, making it a "particularly emotional week" for added: "Jo used to say if good people don't step forward and come into politics then what do we end up with?"And even though some of us feel quite out of place in this place at times, we are here to make a difference and we're here to make positive change that society has asked us to do." Adam Bishop, 35, said he was "all for it"."I have an auntie at the moment who's got advanced Alzheimer's, so I'm seeing her steady decline and how week to week she's getting worse and worse," he said."I know she'll probably never be able to agree to that, but obviously it's a step in the right direction for others."Mr Bishop said people should not have to suffer."I do believe with your own life, you should be given the choice when you want to end it and in a dignified way," he added. Critics have argued the bill risks people being coerced into seeking an assisted death, something Phoenix Grey is also concerned 38-year-old from Batley said his support would depend on the rules and regulations put in place to protect people."It's going to have to be really strict," he said."It's to make sure they're 100% sure, then to give them time once they've made that decision to come back later down the line."If they still think it's the right decision only then can it go ahead." Before the vote, the House of Commons spent more than three hours debating the general principles of the Benita Althwaite, 68, said it felt "right" that people could decide to end their lives."It's making me cry because, you know, the thought that anybody's become so upset or in a position where they just want to be at peace," she said."It's everybody's right to do what they want with their body now or in the future." MPs were allowed a free vote on the bill, meaning they did not have to follow a party approved by the House of Lords, ministers would have a maximum of four years to implement the measures, meaning it could be 2029 before assisted dying becomes available. Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.

Telegraph

an hour ago

• Telegraph

Bernie Ecclestone fired everyone in the team apart from me

As a man who came up with some of Formula One's greatest innovations, it is not a surprise that Gordon Murray marvels with fascination about the futuristic robots that operated on him last year. For decades, Murray – who spent two successful decades in F1 with Brabham and McLaren – has suffered from acid reflux, which increases the risk of oesophageal cancer. At the start of 2024 he was diagnosed with adenocarcinoma [cancer that starts in the glands]. 'For 15 years I've been going for an endoscopy every year and a biopsy. We caught it with one of those. The problem with oesophageal cancer is that it doesn't have many symptoms until it's too late, which is why the survival rate is very low,' Murray tells Telegraph Sport. Murray's brother Terry died of the disease 11 years ago. From there it was a choice of having surgery straight away or chemotherapy first and then robotic-assisted surgery. Murray chose the latter. 'The oncologist spent the best part of an hour going through the possible side-effects with me and my wife before I started the chemo and boy I got everything,' he says. The most extreme of the side-effects was atrial fibrillation, where Murray's heart rate soared to 180bpm. To remedy this, his heart was stopped and restarted. This delayed his procedure but he eventually had the operation to remove the cancer in July last year. The Da Vinci XI surgical robot used in Murray's procedure is controlled by a doctor. In Murray's case this was Professor Shaun Preston, based at Private Care at Guy's Hospital. Preston and his team have now performed more than 250 robotic-assisted cancer operations. 'The Da Vinci robots allow keyhole surgery to be performed with a magnified, immersive, 3D image that is better than the naked eye,' Professor Preston explains. 'It is like operating from within the abdomen and/or chest.' This groundbreaking technology, which allows surgeons to operate with greater precision, was a natural point of fascination for Murray the engineer. 'The surgeon sits on the other side of the room with a PlayStation, basically, and you are lying there and everything is done with robots,' he says. The surgery was a success and Murray was out of intensive care within six days. He claims to be back to working 11-hour days – although he has been getting used to being fed by tube. Murray, as enthusiastic as ever at 78, sees the similarities in the medical technology used in his operation and his own career. 'It's a bit like us prototyping a racing car. That's the fun bit for me: when you think of an idea and then you have to develop it before you actually go racing,' he says. 'Racing' is still what Murray is best known for, 35 years after he left F1. His years helping to revive Brabham, working with then owner Bernie Ecclestone, were undoubtedly the peak of his (and arguably anybody's) innovation in motorsport. Murray moved to the UK from his native South Africa in 1969 as a 23-year-old. Not too long after, he secured a job on Brabham's design team after meeting with then-designer and co-founder Ron Tauranac. In 1972 the struggling outfit was bought by Bernie Ecclestone, who sacked everyone in the technical team apart from Murray. He became chief designer at just 26, starting a period of revival that would result in 22 grand prix wins and two world championships. 'I should have gone home and had many sleepless nights thinking about it. But I didn't. I just came in in the morning and got stuck in and designed a car I thought would win,' Murray says. 'Bernie Ecclestone was my business partner for 14 years at Brabham. He fired the other four guys and just kept me in and said right, you're it, you're the chief designer – I want a brand new Formula One car.' To this day, Murray is still not totally sure why Ecclestone decided to keep only him on board. 'Nobody has ever got the real answer. One time he said 'I found him under a dust sheet in the corner of the design office'. Another time it was everybody – I don't know who 'everybody' was – told me to fire Gordon so I decided to keep him. Bernie loves coming up with these fun answers.' Murray has a suspicion that interest from other teams – he designed Alain de Cadenet's Duckhams LM for the 1972 edition of Le Mans and was approached by Italian team Tecno to design their F1 car – made Ecclestone think he was worth retaining. Murray says he would 'hate' to design F1 cars today because of the lack of freedom for designers. Back then the latitude in the regulations allowed him space to come up with some of motorsport's most enduring innovations and designs, including structural carbon fibre and pull-rod suspension. There was also the introduction of strategic pit-stops and refuelling in F1 towards the end of the 1982 season with the BT50. 'I did some calculations on the lap-time differential between half tanks and full tanks and that was very easy to calculate. We knew that going from empty tanks to full tanks was about 2.5sec a lap. So, if you could start on half tanks you would have a second-a-lap advantage, every lap,' Murray explains. 'Because there were no rules about refuelling I used pressure – we had a couple of old beer barrels and we pressurised one, I think 2.5bar or something and we could get 30 gallons of fuel in in three seconds. It was highly dangerous!' The problem was that turbo-charger issues were so persistent that they only got to the pit stop once in that period. The chance of a real and lasting advantage, Murray believed, had disappeared. 'Because we never finished a race, I said to Bernie 'we've completely blown it'. We've shown them now for about four or five races what we're going to do and when we arrive at the first race in Brazil [next season], everybody will have a half-tank car, a pit-stop car and they didn't. I couldn't believe our luck!' When you think of innovation and Gordon Murray and embody it within a single Formula One car, though, the machine that will pop into most people's heads is 1978's Brabham BT46B, or the 'fan car'. The design came about almost by accident. Brabham's flat-12 Alfa Romeo engine was too large to go down the ground-effect route of the Lotus 78, so Murray had to come up with another solution. He did so by studying the regulations and finding a loophole. The idea with the fan was to use it to create downforce – which it did, enormously – but because its 'primary purpose' was cooling it was not classified as a moveable aerodynamic device and was permitted within regulations. Getting it to last was problematic, though. 'We did some private testing at Donington and then Brands Hatch and the fans, which were composite plastic, all exploded,' Murray says. 'With only one week before the Swedish Grand Prix I had to recast all the blades in magnesium and machine the plastic hub for the fan in aluminium. When we got to Sweden I had no idea if it would work.' Although Niki Lauda and John Watson had to adapt their driving styles to get the best from the new car ('I had to explain to them that their approach to a corner – forget everything they knew') the Austrian won the race at Anderstorp by 34 seconds. However, after protests and wrangling between the teams and the sport's governing body, the fan concept was banned. Murray's time at Brabham ended in 1986 after two drivers' titles. By that point he decided he wanted out of F1. 'We lost Nelson Piquet, we lost the tyre contract, we lost the BMW engine contract. I thought I've just won two world championships… I should go and do something different. Bernie by then had definitely got his mind set on running Formula One,' Murray says. Ron Dennis at McLaren had eyed Murray to replace Ferrari-bound John Barnard. After some persuading, Murray took up the offer to become the team's technical director for 1987. At the time, McLaren had a reputation for stuffiness and rigid formality. Woking was a stark contrast to Brabham, partly down to the enormous difference in resources. Murray says he was still given latitude to operate, technically and personally. 'My contract said I had a completely free hand, even the way I dressed – so it didn't change much there. Likewise, just like Bernie, Ron Dennis gave me a completely free hand with the technical side of the business.' The result was a perfect end to a storied F1 career and 'a nice way to bow out': three double world championships, with Ayrton Senna taking two drivers' titles and Alain Prost the other. Of all the drivers Murray worked with, it is no shock that he rates Senna as fastest. But he has a lot of affection for another Brazilian – Nelson Piquet, who won two drivers' championships in 1981 and 1983 in Murray's cars. 'He had a bicycle and a flat nearby and he came in every day and sat at my drawing board and asked questions all day. The interaction I had with Nelson in those seven years was very, very special.' After leaving F1, Murray designed the McLaren F1, the company's first sportscar. Its revolutionary design, fittingly, utilised a carbon fibre monocoque. 30 years ago last weekend, a modified F1 GTR won the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the last road car to do so. Of all Murray's achievements, he calls this 'top trumps'. 'Forget the fact that it was a GT car, not a prototype – it wasn't supposed to win. I think that is a much harder thing to do than winning a world championship in Formula One because you only get one shot at it. 'When I first thought about doing Le Mans in '72, I was terrified because I knew what went wrong in a grand prix car in two hours. That is like doing a whole season without stopping.'

The Guardian

an hour ago

• The Guardian

‘They feel betrayed': how Reform UK is targeting votes in Britain's manufacturing heartlands

When Nigel Farage called for the nationalisation of British Steel on a visit to the Scunthorpe steelworks this spring, it was a marked change in direction for a man who had spent almost all of his political career campaigning for a smaller, Thatcherite state. Two years earlier, he had questioned why British taxpayers' money should be thrown into keeping the fires of the very same blast furnaces burning. Back in 2018 he told an interviewer: 'I supported Margaret Thatcher's modernisation and reforms of the economy. It was painful for some people, but it had to happen.' After gaining a fifth MP and sweeping to a string of victories in England's local elections last month, his Reform UK is coming for Labour in places Keir Starmer's party once considered its traditional heartlands: the former mill towns, pit villages and workshops of northern England and the Midlands, the steel towns of south Wales and the shipyards of Scotland. Farage's success in what journalists and politicians know as the 'red wall' – ripped from Labour control by Boris Johnson in 2019 – is no coincidence. The targeted campaign plotted from Reform's Millbank Tower headquarters overlooking the River Thames has the general election in 2029 squarely in mind. Rightwing populists around the world are increasingly campaigning on the consequences of deindustrialisation: from Donald Trump's efforts to champion the US rust belt to Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) targeting east German auto workers. Railing against net zero, sky-high energy prices and threats to sovereignty – after supply chain disruption in the Covid crisis, and a fracturing geopolitical landscape – are central to the playbook. There is, however, an irony of a privately educated former commodities trader and career politician offering hope for Britain's deindustrialised communities, where successive governments have promised – and largely failed – to turn around decades of living standards stagnation. In the first on a series on the battle for Britain's deindustrialised areas, the Guardian maps out the rise in support for Reform, and speaks to its campaigners, Labour, the Conservatives, union leaders and economists to document the high-stakes fight. From the vantage point of the 34th floor of the Shard, Zia Yusuf explained how Reform would unshackle the City of London by cutting wealth taxes and deregulating bitcoin. But the party's then chair had his sights elsewhere at the same time. The former Goldman Sachs banker and millionaire startup founder said there was good reason why working-class voters were turning to Reform. 'If you go and speak to people who live in these communities, they just feel completely betrayed,' he said. 'I spent a lot of time in Runcorn. A lot of this is driven basically by a political class that's never really thought about the experience of people living in these areas. And Nigel speaks to those people. '[As with] one of the things Trump is trying to do – whatever your views on the approach he is taking – I think we've got to manufacture more things here. We've got to have energy security. We can't be in a crazy situation where we're unable to produce primary steel.' The message of reindustrialisation is viewed as a unifying theme for Reform's policies. In the pivot to the economic left, Farage's road trip has taken him to Runcorn and Newton Aycliffe, County Durham – where Reform triumphed in elections last month – and the steel towns of Scunthorpe and Port Talbot. In Port Talbot, the south Wales town that recently lost its blast furnaces, he demanded their reopening – along with the valleys' coalmines. However, Labour is fighting back. Rachel Reeves placed investment and regional economic 'renewal' at the heart of her spending review last week, namechecking places that would be sprayed with cash. The government's long-awaited industrial strategy, due on Monday, is designed to bolster manufacturing, and there are hopes that it will tackle sky-high energy prices for industry. Such is the threat in Labour's old heartlands that Starmer used a hastily arranged visit to a St Helens glass factory last month to decry Reform for its 'fantasy economics', comparing Farage to Liz Truss. Will Jennings, the professor of political science and public policy at the University of Southampton, said: 'The fact they are focusing their campaigns there are because the sorts of voters drawn to their messages are there. 'The structure of support for Reform, much like for the Brexit party and Ukip before it, very much tends to be in particular areas, described often, sometimes unhelpfully, as 'left-behind towns'. They tend to be older, have former manufacturing industries, tend to be distant from Westminster, and tend to have suffered economic loss.' Reform came second to Labour in 89 constituencies at the 2024 general election, running Starmer's party closest in the 103-year-old south Wales Labour stronghold of Llanelli, a steel town once famous for manufacturing tinplate. Most of the constituencies are in the north and Midlands. It is these seats where the 2029 battle will be most fierce. Analysis by the Guardian shows these target seats have a higher share of manufacturing jobs than the country at large, demonstrating that, despite decades of industrial decline, they remain more dependent than most on steel, car manufacturing and chemicals. Overall they account for a fifth of Britain's industrial base. Including towns such as Redcar, Wigan and Rotherham, the average share of manufacturing employment is 12.3%, compared with 8.8% for the UK as a whole. The seat of Washington and Gateshead South, home to the vast Nissan factory near Sunderland, has the highest share, at 35.3%. Separate research by the Trades Union Congress shows Labour seats with the most manufacturing jobs are more likely to have Reform as the second party (34% of seats), compared with the average across all Labour constituencies (22%). Recent predictions from MRP models show Reform would win at least 180 seats if an election was held tomorrow, including nearly all of the places where it placed second to Labour in 2024. Most of the seats cover towns that have been hit hard economically by manufacturing decline. When Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, Britain's industrial base was already dwindling from its peak in the early 20th century, yet still contributed about 30% to GDP. Many areas were also still dominated by industry – including Hartlepool, Burnley and Stoke-on-Trent, where more than half of all jobs were in manufacturing. The deindustrialisation of the 1980s was, however, brutally fast as the UK transitioned to a more services-oriented economy, reliant on imported goods. Today manufacturing accounts for about a tenth of annual output. But Reform is not only targeting nostalgia for a bygone age when Britain made things. When the factories closed, the jobs they offered were either not replaced or were supplanted by lower-paid, insecure work. Whole towns have suffered economically as a result, falling behind the rest of the country despite the promises of successive governments to turn things around. Austerity made matters worse. Last month, research by academics at the University of Staffordshire showed cuts since 1984 have disproportionately affected coalfield and deindustrialised areas, including reductions in welfare and benefit worth £32.6bn between 2010 and 2021. Andy Haldane, the former Bank of England chief economist, said: 'Whichever lens you look at – economic, social, environmental – those places have been lost, and in that sense they have been left behind. And if not overlooked, then underinvested in, systematically, over at least a generation. If not two. 'The longer that has gone on and has turned into generational stasis, or a lack of social mobility, the greater people in those places have willingness to seek redemption elsewhere. Brexit was that, almost a decade ago. And Reform might be it now.' Haldane, the architect of levelling up, and a key figure in the last government's industrial strategy, said Farage had effectively become a 'tribune for the working classes'. The Guardian's analysis shows Reform's target seats would have an average ranking on the English index of multiple deprivation of 92, out of 543 places in total, with 1 being the most deprived. The index brings together a wide range of data sources to build a picture of deprivation, including income, work, education, health and crime rates. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion Average wages are £65 a week lower than the UK average. Unemployment, economic inactivity and the rate of jobless benefit claims are higher. To track the rise of Reform, Labour researchers have been using data from parliamentary petitions as a straw poll to see if the party is growing in their local area. Analysts are poring over data from the 'Call a General Election' online poll, launched within months of the last one, and signed by 3 million people. Signatories have to enter a postcode, enabling support to be plotted geographically. Hotspots included Essex and Lincolnshire – Reform strongholds. 'We're looking at how active they are, where we can assign a high probability that it [a petition] is being driven by Reform or their organised groups via WhatsApp,' said one adviser to a Labour MP. Almost all the Reform target seats backed Brexit, including 15 Labour won from the Tories in 2024. Most had only been Tory since 2019, when many decades-old Labour seats backed Boris Johnson's 'levelling up' and 'get Brexit done' messages. On average, leave voters tend to be more socially conservative and anti-immigration. Many 'red wall' MPs are pushing Starmer to adopt a tougher stance on immigration as a result, including the Blue Labour caucus founded by Maurice Glasman. Reform has pushed hard on the issue, in a high-stakes campaign after last summer's riots across the UK – including in many post-industrial towns. Experts said economic conditions alone did not explain anti-migrant views or justify rioting, but that austerity and stalling living standards fuelled grievances and mistrust of institutions. Luke Telford, a criminal and social policy academic at the University of York and author on Brexit and deindustrialisation, said: 'The key narratives we heard in the months after [the riots] was it is all about the far right and social media. 'Undoubtedly that's an important contributor to the outbursts of inarticulate rage we saw. But that rage doesn't occur in a vacuum, it is bound to certain social, cultural and economic conditions that combined. 'It's certain that the areas among the most deprived, were among those with high levels of rioting. It's impossible to ignore that kind of correlation.' However, fetishising industrial jobs and prioritising the restoration of British manufacturing might not be the best route to an economic renaissance. Not least because England's regions are more economically and culturally diverse places than some in Westminster give them credit for. Many economists say the idea is riddled with misunderstanding about modern Britain, where its strengths mainly lie in high-value services, rather than on low-paid production that is at risk of being automated away. Most Britons think manufacturing is important for the economy. Most parents do not want their children to pursue a career in the sector. 'I don't think you have to replace manufacturing job with manufacturing job in a Trump-like fashion to resist the rise of populism,' said Haldane. 'But you do need to replace them with something that is at least as good, in terms of quality of work, pay, security and a degree of pride around it. And you do need to invest in the supporting infrastructure. Whether that's transport, housing, or social infrastructure – like youth clubs and parks.' Reindustrialisation runs like a seam of coal through the rhetoric of rightwing populists worldwide – seen most prominently in Trump's Make America Great Again campaign to 'bring back' factory jobs to rust belt states. Much of the intellectual driving force behind reviving industry emanates from the US. The economist Oren Cass and his American Compass conservative thinktank, with close ties to JD Vance in particular, has promoted a 'new right' strategy prioritising a pro-worker, pro-trade union, pro-industry agenda that is scathing of corporate America. Cass was among speakers – including Farage and Kemi Badenoch – at a London conference held by the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (Arc) this year, sharing a stage with Michael Gove, the Spectator editor and former Tory cabinet minister. Founded by the Canadian psychologist and self-help author Jordan Peterson and the Tory peer Philippa Stroud, Arc's financial backers include the British hedge fund manager Paul Marshall and the Dubai-based investment firm Legatum – who also co-own GB News, where Farage has a prime-time show. Another figure is Matthew Goodwin, also a GB News commentator and regular speaker at Reform rallies. An ex-academic, he studied what he calls the 'realignment' of British politics, whereby the left has shifted to supporting liberal, metropolitan values, allowing the right to hoover up more socially conservative, working-class voters. Farage and Trump share common ground in promising to roll back net zero – ostensibly to boost manufacturing jobs in heavier polluting sectors, including oil and gas, coal, steel and chemicals. And both are courting trade union members and their worries over foreign competition, the impact of decarbonisation and high energy costs on heavy industry. Gary Smith, the general secretary of the GMB union, which includes offshore workers in Scotland among its members, has called for an 'honest debate' about Labour's plans for industry. He told the Guardian that net zero advocates on the left risked fuelling support for Reform by leaving workers out of the debate. 'Climate fundamentalism and rightwing populism are two cheeks of the same backside,' he said. 'We need to have a programme about jobs and apprenticeships to bring back hope. Neoliberalism is dead and globalisation as we knew it is over. Working-class people aren't voting for cheap TVs and training shoes. They want their jobs back.' At an event in Westminster late last year to lobby Labour MPs on high manufacturing energy costs, GMB's shop stewards were approached uninvited by the Reform deputy leader, Richard Tice, trying to curry their favour. But while Reform can count on support from some union members, the labour movement's leaders are furious at its overtures. 'We wouldn't talk to those fuckers. Load of posh boys hanging tough for the working class? They can go fuck themselves,' said one union boss. Paul Nowak, the general secretary of the TUC, said: 'The hypocrisy is stunning. This is a guy [Farage] who was hanging on the coat-tails of Donald Trump. He turns up at Scunthorpe saying he wants to save British Steel at the same time as his mate in the White House is slapping tariffs on steel and could cost jobs across Britain's manufacturing base. 'In industrial communities there is a lot of cynicism about politics and whether it can make a difference. But it can make a tangible difference to peoples lives who is in Downing Street.' For Labour, the challenge from Farage showed the importance of an 'ambitious' industrial strategy, he said. It could be central to its hopes of winning a second term.