Starmer names his enemy

Keir Starmer has finally said the quiet part out loud: the real threat to Labour isn’t the Conservatives, it’s Reform UK. In a speech ostensibly about economic responsibility, the Prime Minister devoted more than half his airtime to warning voters about Nigel Farage. Reform, he claimed, is pushing “fantasy economics” and preparing a “mad experiment” that would crash the economy just like Liz Truss.

This wasn’t a one-off. Starmer is clearly fixated. His X feed is laced with attacks on Farage by name. Reform responded with a slick montage of every time Starmer mentioned Farage in the speech—a PR gift wrapped in Labour blue.

Labour is no longer ahead in the polls. According to Electoral Calculus' latest “poll-of-polls” published today, Reform has surged to 30 percent support which is seven points ahead of Labour and 12 ahead of the Conservatives. For the first time, the model projects that Reform could secure an outright majority in the Commons with Farage as Prime Minister. The Conservatives, meanwhile, are predicted to fall to fifth place behind the Liberal Democrats and SNP.

For now, Reform has five MPs, a chaotic comms team and a fiscal platform that strains credibility. Yet Starmer is punching upward. Not because Reform has seized power, but because it has seized momentum. It has cut through. It has parked its tanks on Labour’s lawn with pledges to scrap the two-child benefit cap, reverse winter fuel cuts and lift the income tax threshold to £20,000 - a move the IFS estimates could cost up to £80 billion. Reform says it would fund this by scrapping net zero, axing diversity programmes and ending hotel accommodation for asylum seekers.

The Truss comparison is meant to disqualify Farage. But it reveals something else: economic orthodoxy is now the firewall of polite politics. Stray from it and you’re a fantasist. Suggest the state can afford more for pensioners, parents and the unfashionable majority and you're cast as a threat to stability.

It’s a shaky line for Labour to hold while still contorting over welfare. Having ruled out scrapping the two-child cap, Starmer now insists he’s “looking at all options”. Farage, meanwhile, just says he’d scrap it. The optics are plain: Labour dithers, Reform declares.

Farage sees opportunity. He’s cast Starmer’s speech as “Project Fear 2.0”—a reboot of the establishment’s Brexit-era scare tactics. And the frame may well stick. Truss herself re-entered the fray to accuse Starmer of repeating “lies” and warned that Britain faces a real economic crisis, not the “confected” one used to discredit her.

By publicly elevating Reform as Labour’s main adversary, Starmer has conferred something no outsider can manufacture: narrative centrality. He wants voters to see the next election as a sober choice between stability and chaos. But by naming his enemy, he may have set the terms for something far less manageable: a referendum on managed decline versus a messy alternative that at least dares to challenge it.