Labour has seen a slump in support since Keir Starmer stepped up his personal abuse of Nigel Farage, a survey found yesterday.
The Prime Minister has launched a series of scathing attacks on the Reform leader in recent days, branding him the ‘enemy’ on Saturday, calling his migration policies ‘racist’ on Sunday and using his Labour conference speech to question his patriotism.
Sir Keir stepped up the offensive again yesterday, claiming Mr Farage is responsible for the Channel crisis – and even describing the dinghies packed with illegal migrants as ‘Farage boats’.
But a new poll yesterday suggested the tactic may have backfired. The More in Common survey, conducted over the weekend, recorded a five-point fall in support for Labour.
The poll of more than 2,000 people found Reform’s lead over Labour had jumped from three points to ten in a week, with Mr Farage’s party up two points to 30 per cent and Labour down five to 20.
Labour strategists are waiting nervously for the public reaction to Sir Keir’s speech. But Mr Farage seized on the early findings, saying: ‘Labour have dropped five points in the polls this week. This is what happens when you insult millions of voters.’
In a series of interviews yesterday, Sir Keir denied he was trying to incite violence against Mr Farage.
But he said the Reform leader should be blamed for the small boats crisis, because his successful campaign to leave the EU had ended a long-running returns agreement with countries on the continent.
The PM told GB News: ‘I would gently point out to Nigel Farage and others that before we left the EU, we had a returns agreement with every country in the EU and he told the country it would make no difference if we left. He was wrong about that. These are Farage boats, in many senses, that are coming across the Channel.’
But experts yesterday said the so-called Dublin Convention, which governed returns to the EU, had been of very limited use.
Tony Smith, former head of UK Border Force, said ‘hardly any’ migrants had ever been returned to France while Britain was in the EU due to bureaucratic hurdles.Mr Smith, who was in charge of trying to organise returns to the EU, called the PM’s claim ‘nonsense’, saying the Dublin agreement was ‘not that successful at all’. He added: ‘I don’t know who is advising the Prime Minister but whoever it is, they have not done their homework. They are clearly putting out false messaging trying to deflect from the problem they’ve got.’
A Reform source pointed out Mr Farage was the first senior politician to bring the crisis to public attention.
In the summer of 2020 he highlighted the arrival of dinghies on Kent beaches and became the first to reveal the role of the French navy in escorting migrant boats across the Channel. The source called Sir Keir’s comments ‘totally dishonest’.
Mr Farage accused the PM of ‘descending into the gutter’ after he used his keynote speech to Labour’s annual conference to launch personal attacks on the Reform leader.
Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy was forced to withdraw a poisonous claim that Mr Farage ‘flirted’ with the Hitler Youth after he admitted he had no evidence for it.
Sir Keir yesterday denied that his rhetoric risked putting a target on Mr Farage’s back.
Asked if there was a risk his comments could incite attacks on Reform activists, he told Times Radio: ‘No it’s not’. He said it was right to point out ‘the toxic division and divide’ a Reform government would cause.
Meanwhile, Reform MP Danny Kruger accused the PM of ‘playing with fire’.
‘The consequence of what this Prime Minister and David Lammy and others have done could well be to cause political trouble of this very serious nature including physical violence,’ he said.
‘I think he is playing with fire by using this total slur. The worst thing you can say about someone these days is to call them racist or to call them a Nazi and that is what the Labour Party has done to us this week.’
