𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Labour has glimpsed a future that terrifies ministers and grassroots members alike. It would be an epic humiliation for the party to lose its giant majority at the next election and let the Conservatives take back the management of Great Britain.

But losing power to Reform UK would be arguably the most damning verdict the electorate has ever given on a Labour government. Just as US Democrats are still shellshocked and in despair that Americans gave Donald Trump a mandate to point the US in an entirely new direction, so Labour activists are horrified at the thought of what Reform would do on immigration and net zero.

The party had two options. It could deny Nigel Farage’s party – which has just five MPs – the oxygen of airtime, in much the same way it chooses to ignore the Liberal Democrats and the Greens. Or it could put ferocious attacks on Reform UK in the major speeches of Cabinet ministers.

It has opted for the latter move, which is dangerous. It builds up the credibility of Reform as a serious party of government. It hands them millions of pounds of free publicity. But there are clear reasons why Sir Keir Starmer and his team have calculated this is a risk worth taking. There is a genuine fear that the country is on the brink of irrevocable change, and there is old-fashioned realpolitik.

Reform has an 11-point lead over Labour in Politico’s latest poll of polls. If this continues to widen in the years ahead, then Sir Keir will go down in history as the man who handed Mr Farage a landslide.

Reform has had high-profile internal rows and departures, but there is no sign it is fizzling out. The recent defection of Danny Kruger from the Conservatives to the party shows that ambitious, serious-minded Right-wingers believe it has a real chance of seizing power.

But why is Labour not scrambling to stop the march of the Greens and the Lib Dems? It is claimed these parties are taking more supporters away from Labour than Reform. Why not try to stamp out the rise of these Left-wing alternatives?

That is a task for another day, even though many Labour activists would be delighted to see their party double down on net zero, launch a valiant defence of the European Convention on Human Rights and propose even tougher action on Gaza.

Such measures would risk alienating voters who are tempted to join Reform. Of course, Labour may change tack if new Green leader Zack Polanski emerges as a Farage of the Left and Labour faces the French-style nightmare of being squeezed on both sides, but right now its strategy is to strike to the Right.

This also makes life difficult for the Conservatives, who are in an even more painful position in the polls.

Every attack by Labour on Reform cements the sense that, as Mr Farage claims, his party is the real opposition and not Kemi Badenoch’s. She needs to present her party at its conference next week as the go-to option for people fed up with Labour, but the Prime Minister appears to regard her MPs as an irrelevance.

Sir Keir will not mind in the slightest if his attacks on Reform make it harder for the Conservatives to stage a recovery in the polls.

Devoting so much time to attacking Reform may also pull the Labour Party together at a time when the question of whether he will lead it into the next election is under open discussion. When the country faces a dire threat to progressive values in the form of Reform, he and other senior members can argue, this is not the time for Labour to tear itself apart.

With the May elections looming, he needs Labour footsoldiers to go out and campaign. He must avoid the situation where activists stay at home because they are tired of being shouted at on doorsteps about the winter fuel fiasco or the decisions to squeeze more tax out of employers and farming families.

It is in his interests to fix their thoughts on what the country would look like under Mr Farage and stop them seething about Labour’s first-year mistakes.

He knows that Green and Lib Dem supporters are also worried about the rise of Reform. If he can convince them that Labour has what it takes to stop the country lurching to the Right then he may even unite the Left and prove Labour has a clear raison d’être at this difficult time in its history.

If he can halt Reform’s rise and revive Labour, he will be seen as a maestro of politics. But if his strategy backfires, then British progressives will never forgive him.