RENT FREE FARAGE

Keir Starmer is running scared and with good reason.  Reform have led every major opinion poll since the turn of May and despite all of his recent policy shifts and u-turns, Nigel Farage's party have actually extended its national poll lead.  Starmer is rattled and Farage is living rent free in his head.

On Thursday the PM more or less admitted that Farage is now the de facto opposition leader, the primary threat to Labour (sorry, Kemi).  He visited a factory in St Helens and gave a speech entirely dedicated to smearing not Reform, but Farage personally.  The name 'Nigel Farage' dropped out of his mouth 16 times in just under seven minutes.  The thrust of his message was how Farage would handle the economy and he made comparisons with the famed 'disastrous mini-budget' of Kwasi Kwarteng and Liz Truss.  In a tone deaf moment he declared: "The question you have to ask about Nigel Farage is 'Can you trust him?'"

While the answer is probably a resounding 'no', coming from a constantly backpedaling serial liar this is an undeniable case of the pot calling the kettle black.  There must have been some raised eyebrows on the shop floor when he uttered that dumb question.

Whatever Starmer had hoped to achieve with this speech, it unravelled from the very first question posed to him by the assorted media pack.  Within seconds of finishing his short speech, he invited a question from a BBC reporter who delivered this stunning burn: "The speed of the decline in your popularity is historically unprecedented, isn't this speech today an admission that you have failed and Nigel Farage understands voters better than you?"  Starmer was visibly dumbfounded, having seemingly miscalculated that a Beeb hack would probably give him an easier ride.

His response was to blame the 'absolute mess inherited' from the Tories.

The Beeb reporter was followed by several others, each of whom delivered a damaging rebuke to the PM.  His big anti-Farage set piece quickly turned into a car crash and he looked like a deer in the headlights as each damning question was put to him.  A compilation of the onslaught compiled by Alex Armstrong of GB News can be seen below, albeit chopped and edited out of sequence.

The reporters heard in the following video appear in the following order: Peter Walker of The Guardian, Harry Farley of BBC News, Chris Hope of GB News, Amanda Akass of Sky News and Aggie Chambre of LBC.  The final question, regarding national insurance and the child benefit cap, comes from a reporter named 'Nora' who we have been unable to identify.

On Thursday Reform took a council seat from Labour in south Wales with a massive swing.  Senedd elections are taking place next year and Reform are in second place according to the most recent poll, which doesn't sound too disastrous for Labour in itself, except Labour were in third!  However, that poll was carried out at the end of April - before Reform's landslide victories across England - so it is more than likely that Reform are now also ahead of Plaid.

Starmer talks a lot about 'change', but the seismic change currently happening in British politics is seemingly beyond his control.  And if he's losing legacy media entities such as The Guardian and the BBC, there may be a change at the top in Downing Street happening long before the next general election.