There’s a party game I’ve never played called F…, Marry, Kill. Before Labour conference, Keir Starmer will have been consulting with his closest advisers on how to play his own version of the game regarding Nigel Farage and Reform UK. This game is called “Accommodate, Confront, Ignore”.
“Ignore” had some attractions. Last week, Sir John Curtice, that monument to psephology, advised the prime minister that to talk a lot about immigration or asylum (and, inevitably, also about Reform) was tantamount to choosing to fight battles on the enemy’s ground. Far better to concentrate on the government’s main tasks and many voters’ main preoccupations: the economy, the cost of living and the state of public services.
At the conference, there were takers for this view. Reform may be buoyant right now, they were arguing, but it is still a party with just five MPs and led by someone who has never run anything in his life – a sort of right-wing Jeremy Corbyn. Best to spend the valuable attention that a PM’s speech always gets by concentrating on your own agenda.
It was ironic to hear some journalists pushing this view, having in effect constantly pushed the Farage elephant into the political room and now demanding that the prime minister ignore it. But the polls don’t allow it. Nor does the media’s concentration on Reform voters and the Reform phenomenon at the expense of almost everything else. At some point it had to be directly addressed. But how?
Option two was “Accommodate”. This, essentially, is what the Conservative leadership – as represented by Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick and shadow home secretary Chris Philp – have decided to do. On migration and asylum, the party has become a Reform Mark 2, except with ministerial experience. They have adopted the language of Reform, complaining about “two-tier” justice, visiting anti-hostel protestors and bigging up reports of migrant crime.
The loose outfit known as “Blue Labour” more or less advocates such an approach – but a more plausible Labour version of this would make a series of announcements that could be spun as “toughening up” on migrants and asylum seekers while not mentioning Reform.
When it comes to neutralising an issue, Labour have done a fair bit of this in the last few months. And it hasn’t worked. One problem is that if this becomes a bidding war, Reform will always win it with those voters for whom immigration is the number one issue, as Farage showed this summer when he suddenly performed a volte face and declared himself in favour of mass deportations.
Another is that, though Labour is leaking some supporters to Reform, it is losing twice as many to the Lib Dems and Greens. It makes sense, then, to neutralise around the edges – as in today’s suggestion that they are looking at the question of whether failed asylum seekers find it too easy to use human rights legislation – while putting distance between “respectable” politics and Reform. It is a balancing trick.
Which is why Starmer went for “Confront”, putting blue water not just between Labour and Reform but also between the government and the Conservatives, much to the possible discomfort of the remaining rump of liberal Tories. He said the thing that many people think they see on a daily basis: a Reform-led slide into intolerant attitudes that haven’t been regarded as decent for 50 years.
Then there is the need to pin Farage himself. One perception is that, like his hero Donald Trump, Farage gets away with things because of his personality and his party’s momentum that would trip up any other politician. So Starmer marked his card. The Brexit for which Farage was the second most famous advocate is now unpopular, and Starmer’s labelling of the migrant channel crossings as “Farage boats” was a reminder of that recent history.
I don’t really have any doubt that “Confront” was the right option for Labour this year. Not after a summer of attempts to stir up anti-migrant confrontations. There are three more years to concentrate on other things.
Meanwhile, and it may be a sideshow, but it will be fascinating to see how the Tories manage their own version of F***, Marry, Kill at their own conference later this week. For them, the issue seems genuinely existential.
