What Sir Keir Starmer said in his speech in St Helens today mattered less than the extraordinary fact that he felt the need to do it at all.
It is still less than a year after winning a majority of 174 seats in a sweeping general election result last year, yet Sir Keir felt the need to attack the leader of Reform UK which - checks notes - only has five MPs.
The question was asked whether Nigel Farage is “living rent-free in the prime minister’s head”, and it felt rhetorical because the answer was clearly, yes.
We are still around four years away from a general election, and the prime minister has a massive, urgent inbox, including confusion over Donald Trump’s tariffs, whether to abandon the two-child benefit cap and reverse cuts to winter fuel payments.
But, still, he felt that responding to a speech Mr Farage made on Tuesday, nakedly going after Labour voters, was more of a priority than all of those things.
Sir Keir is not alone in feeling what can only be described as a rising sense of panic on the left.
Just this week, the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar put out a video attacking Mr Farage and Reform in Scotland. This would have been seen as completely ludicrous 12 months ago. Mr Farage’s various parties have never got a foothold north of the border. But not now.
Just this morning, on the front page of the Daily Record in Scotland, was a claim by SNP First Minister John Swinney that the crucial Hamilton South by-election is now a straight fight between his party and Reform - not Labour.
And recent polls put Reform around nine points ahead of Labour, with Starmer’s own approval ratings hitting Liz Truss’ levels.
Just hours after Sir Keir finished speaking Techne UK released their latest weekly tracker poll for The Independent putting Reform on a new high of 31 per cent, nine points ahead of Labour. It also showed that 12 per cent of Labour voters from the 2024 general election had switched to Farage.
The local elections underlined that the “working people” the prime minister so loves to reference in every speech and statement are switching to Reform, particularly in the traditional red wall heartlands of the Midlands, North of England and Wales.
With successes on the foreign stage, including his three trade deals apparently not moving the dial on domestic politics and growing rumours of a leadership challenge in his party, Sir Keir clearly felt the need to go on the front foot in directly responding to Mr Farage.
But what has he achieved? He may have just helped out the Reform leader in completely shutting the credibility gap on the possibility he could be prime minister.
Sir Keir, not for the first time, pronounced the death of the Conservative Party, something many commentators agree with him on. But in doing so he has admitted that a man leading a party of just five MPs stands a strong chance of becoming prime minister.
The whole point of Mr Farage’s speech on Tuesday was to say that if you “vote Reform you get Reform”. Sir Keir has now admitted that it is true and that Reform is his biggest opposition - if not in numbers of MPs - but definitely in support.
The prime minister’s points about how Reform and Mr Farage have policies which are bad for working people were well made and forceful. It is true that they oppose workers’ rights, they want to cut taxes for the wealthy, and their plans would bankrupt the country.
But the issue is whether people are listening to the specifics or are instead looking at a wider picture of failure by the main parties.
Reform has already claimed that Starmer’s decision to nationalise British Steel was a direct result of the party announcing the same left-wing policy just days before. Now, if Starmer U-turns to scrap the two-child benefit cap and winter fuel payments, he will again look as though he is following Reform’s lead.
This will probably be the first of many events for Sir Keir aimed at thwarting Mr Farage. But he is now in danger of giving Reform the credibility it craves with the country as a potential party of government rather than one of protest.
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