Labour's Attack Has Backfired

The Reform lead has grown again.

Stuart Mitchell/@IncMonocle

The verdict is in: a strategy of hysterical name-calling and attempted demonisation isn’t a good look for the governing party.

Indeed Britain clearly isn’t impressed with Labour’s ridiculous attacks on Reform.

They have already backfired. There is clear evidence of that in the latest research, just out.

Before I get to that though, I must say that Kemi Badenoch’s conference speech was very helpful in one sense.

It spelt out perfectly the horrific mess the country is in thanks to the spineless Conservatives, their failures now accelerated by Labour.

The governing Tory legacy is one of seeking to fool voters with a manifesto that then bears no resemblance to what you actually do in Government. They did this time and time again.

High taxes, record-high immigration, eye-watering energy bills thanks to Net Zero, pathetic on crime and with weak borders: this is the legacy from years of a Tory Government, now an agenda boosted by Labour in power.

The Tories hilariously claim that they would now leave the ECHR.

It has taken them pretty much seven years to work up the courage to say that: the Tory Government declared a ‘major incident’ in 2018 when the illegal migrant boats began to cross.

Instead of stopping the boats the Conservatives bitched whilst doing nothing, even allowing the ECHR to block their Rwanda policy.

With Reform regularly registering more than double the level of support of the Conservatives, Badenoch’s party are now suddenly copying the same policies.

However the issue for Kemi Badenoch and her party is this: how can they expect voters to trust a word they say given their horrendous track record?

The truth is that the Tories are more likely to be in a battle for third place with the Liberal Democrats than seriously having a chance at governing again.

So the battle is between Labour and Reform - and it appears Starmer’s attacks on Nigel Farage’s Reform have gone down very badly indeed with the country.