SIR Keir Starmer knows what he will be fighting at the next election, he just doesn’t know who or how.
The Prime Minister believes it is inevitable he will defend his shallow majority against a right-wing populist force that has a significant chance of sweeping him from power.
Some around him believe the odds of Nigel Farage being the next PM are as high as 3/1.
Even if Reform fell well short of that, they could still decimate Starmer’s Parliamentary rump in the urban North, Wales and forgotten coastal Britain.
While left-wing pundits and well-heeled podcasters will scoff at a 25 per cent chance of a warm-ale swilling, mustard- corduroy wearing revolutionary crossing the threshold of No10, beware false prophets.
They used to say the same about Brexit, then Boris and most of them seem almost concussed after they convinced themselves Trump could be stopped not once but twice.
Their hectoring every time Farage, or one his merry men appears on TV, would suggest that they are struggling to adapt to the new reality, so far.
Around the democratic world, Starmer’s election victory last year looks like an anomaly.
Trump is not alone in riding a wave of anger at the lethal combination of inflation and a long overdue wake-up call to the realities of that glorious harmony provided by decades of open-door migration.
Canada will likewise pivot right as soon as the voters are given the chance by the autumn, and Labour’s sister party in Australia is on the ropes ahead of voting Down Under.
The old order in France and Germany are in for a very bumpy ride before Britain goes again to the polls in a few years’ time.
There are no real straws for Britain’s elites to clutch as comfort that the UK is immune to a similar outpouring of anger from the voters, especially those who feel particularly lied to by a new government, who promised to do things differently.
Even if it is not Farage and Reform when that election comes sometime between 2027 and 2029, Starmer believes they will have dragged the Conservatives and whoever will be leading them then, far, far from what was once called the centre ground.
Clues to where the party is heading can be seen in the words of Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick this weekend, who slammed decades of “importing hundreds of thousands of people from alien cultures, who possess medieval attitudes towards women”.
When even one left-wing Tory howled that such language could “incite hatred” to the point of violence, far from castigating her leadership rival, the current leader Kemi Badenoch leapt to his defence.
The battle between the soft Left and the centre Right belongs in a different era and while Starmer has correctly identified this, it is far from clear he has anything near a strategy to counter it.
“Smashing the gangs” shows no sign of stemming the ceaseless boats beating on our beaches. Technocratic “Plans for Change” that make no mention of migration will not move the dial, which is only going one way.
And when even that Labour windbag Neil Kinnock is outflanking you on national security, calling for defence spending to hit four per cent of GDP, something needs to give.
Starmer will offer a full-throated defence of his own handling of the rape-gang scandal as chief prosecutor today, when he faces the Press for the first time this year.
But when the richest man in the world is machine-gunning you over it in front of hundreds of millions day in, day out, waiting two weeks to respond seems of a bygone age.
“We are not going to get into a food fight with Elon Musk on Twitter,” insists one Starmerite. But the gloves have to come off at some point.
And while Labour and their cheerleaders were in ecstasy as Farage and Musk’s short bromance juddered to a halt yesterday, they should put away the prosecco.
Farage has had a good Christmas — soaring past 170,000 members and in a dead heat with Badenoch in the polls. But the new year hangover has come a few days late.
Yes, in the short term it may seem acutely embarrassing to be ditched by the mercurial billionaire just hours after he told the BBC it was “cool” in the eyes of younger voters that the aspiring Bond-villain turned politico was backing him.
But the reason for the fallout may yet be that last present under the tree.
Farage has spent more than a decade attempting to distance himself from far-right t*t Tommy Robinson, banning his supporters from first UKIP, now Reform.
The fact he is sticking to that and likely kissing goodbye to the hypothetical £100million donation dangled by Musk, is a hard thing for even his most frothing critics to attack.
A lesson in supping with a long spoon, perhaps, but for a man who says his target is No10, putting some clear water between himself and one of the most toxic clowns in British public life is no road block to that goal.
Tommy supporters, though vocal, will not carry Farage past that crucial 30 per cent barrier he needs to break in the polls. Quite the opposite — instead repelling switchers.
While No10 will be praying a similar schism opens between Farage and his other bestie Donald Trump next, they are going to need more than hope as a plan for Nigel.
EYEBROWS were sky high when Sir Keir Starmer invited Saudi Arabia’s highly controversial PM Mohammed bin Salman to join him in his box at his beloved Arsenal soon.
Whatever happened to the Sir Keir who accused previous PMs of “going cap in hand from dictator to dictator” when they toured the Gulf?
But I hear the love-bombing is down to the Saudis, with their billions of investment in Britain, being very sore about being excluded from the Tempest jet currently in development.
The desert Kingdom wants to join the UK, Italy and Japan in building the sixth generation stealth fighter but defence sources say Japan is kicking up rough.
MBS’s ambivalence toward Russia is causing panic in the deep state here too . . .
