Sir Keir Starmer has warned that Labour is in “a fight for the soul of the country” with Reform UK as he launched a counterattack against the “lies and division” of Nigel Farage’s populism.
The prime minister challenged the world’s centre-left parties to take on the likes of Reform, who he said uses division to bolster support. It was his latest bid to thwart the party he considers his greatest threat at the next election.
It came as a new poll suggested that Reform UK would be on the brink of an outright majority if the next election were held today, putting Mr Farage into Downing Street, while panicking Labour MPs are urging Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham to challenge Sir Keir as leader.
On the eve of a make-or-break Labour conference at the weekend, the prime minister unashamedly insisted that Labour and other social democratic parties “need to stand up for our values” of “decency and honesty”.
Addressing an audience at the Global Progress Action Summit in London, attended by Canadian PM Mark Carney, Australian PM Anthony Albanese, and Iceland’s PM Kristrun Frostadottir, Sir Keir warned that they needed to be unafraid in standing up to populism and refused to accept that defeat is inevitable.
And he declared the next election will be an “open fight” between Labour and Reform as the party looks to repair the damage inflicted by the Tories.
He said: “We’re going to face a very different election next time to any of the elections we fought in the United Kingdom for a very, very long time.
“That’s why … I want this to be out as an open fight between Labour and Reform … the choice before the electorate here of the next election is not going to be the traditional Labour versus Conservative.”
He added that his party was “battling with repairing the damage that was done under the last government, which was huge” and “rebuilding in a way which embraces and takes on the battle for the soul of the country”.
Sir Keir’s speech took place after the release of an in-depth YouGov poll that suggested Labour would lose 300 seats in the next general election, significantly increasing Mr Farage’s chances of entering Downing Street in 2029.
It suggests Reform would increase its MPs from just five to 311, making it the largest party in a hung parliament and just 15 seats short of the 326 needed for an outright majority.
Meanwhile, Sir Keir is also on the ropes with his own party after seeing support for Labour drop to just 20 points in some polls, with his own personal ratings among the worst for any prime minister in history.
Mr Burnham is openly on manoeuvres to replace him as Labour leader, while MPs, particularly on the left of the party, have given Sir Keir until the local elections next year to prove he can win.
The challenge has seen allies of the prime minister try to characterise Mr Burham as “Labour’s Liz Truss”, rubbishing his ideas on the economy, but London mayor Sir Sadiq Khan has come out in support of his counterpart, saying his concerns about Labour’s direction are “legitimate”.
With his back to the wall politically, Sir Keir made his most impassioned speech since entering Downing Street in July last year, telling the audience of social democrats that they are in the battle of their lives.
Sir Keir referenced the shocking Unite the Kingdom right-wing march in London two weeks ago, which he said sent “shivers” down the spine of many communities, and criticised the “poisonous belief” that there is a “violent struggle” for the nation coming.
He said that misguided belief was “on full display” when 150,000 demonstrators, led by far-right activist Tommy Robinson and emboldened by Elon Musk, who told protesters to “either fight back or you die”, flooded the capital.
Sir Keir said: “You don’t have to be a great historian to know where that kind of poison ends up, and you could just feel it in a language that is naked in its attempt to intimidate.”
He said it was not “careless or accidental” but part of a strategy to “draw a dividing line between elites and the people”.
The Labour leader said the UK was at a “crossroads”, warning that, with Reform, there was now a “right-wing proposition we have not had in this country before … the battle of our times is between patriotic national renewal … versus something which is turning into a toxic divide”.
But he admitted that parties like Labour “need to deliver renewal” and admitted “it needs to be more than managerial politics”.
The prime minister said that this is why he was introducing digital ID cards to help tackle the black market and illegal working and end the crisis of illegal migration, which is fuelled by the populist hard right.
Responding to Sir Keir’s speech, Reform said the public was “waking up to the fact Starmer is just continuing the Tory legacy of high taxes and mass immigration”.
A party spokesperson said: “For decades, the British people have been betrayed by both Labour and the Conservatives. People have voted election after election for lower taxes and controlled immigration, instead, both parties have done the opposite.”
Meanwhile, one leftwing Labour MP Clive Lewis, a critic of Starmer’s approach, warned that the decision to go for digital ID will “drown out” his attack on Reform.
He said: “It’s been drowned out by the ID cards. I mean a million already have signed the petition against them.
“The most unnecessary and divisive hill you could die on – on the day you make a speech about authoritarianism and rebuilding a fractured society. I’m speechless.”
