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Sir Keir Starmer has told colleagues he now sees Nigel Farage’s Reform UK as his “real opponent”, at the end of a week in which he sharpened his message on migration and faced accusations that he was using the language of the far right.
The prime minister has told his team he believes Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives might be reaching the “end of the road” and that Britain could be witnessing a major realignment of its politics.
A senior Labour official said Starmer would be willing to debate Farage ahead of the next election, with polls suggesting the public also see Reform UK as the most credible opposition to his Labour government. Farage said on Friday: “I accept the offer.”
In spite of the Reform threat and criticism by his MPs of planned welfare cuts, Starmer has insisted that the UK’s bloated benefit bill must be brought under control. He has also told colleagues he is not about to reshuffle his cabinet.
Starmer on Friday concluded a two-day visit to Albania during which he attempted to toughen up his message on migration, ahead of what will be a politically delicate EU-UK summit in London on Monday.
The prime minister knows that Farage and Badenoch will portray his promised “reset” of post-Brexit relations as a “surrender” to Brussels, and will seek to paint a proposed youth mobility scheme as a return to free movement.
Badenoch, who has said Britain should not be a “supplicant” in the talks, has promised to “take back any legislative or judicial powers handed over to the EU by the present government”.
Starmer is more worried about Farage, noting to friends that while he faces Badenoch every week across the despatch box in the House of Commons, his “real opponent” is Reform UK, whose five MPs are for now a small insurgency lurking in the parliamentary undergrowth.
He is withering about Badenoch, whose party was humiliated by Reform in this month’s English local elections, and her decision to criticise the trade deals done by Starmer with India and the US in the last two weeks.
“Now without knowing what is in the deal with the EU, she says she’s against it,” Starmer told the Financial Times. “The only saving grace is that nobody in Europe takes her seriously so it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference.”
Starmer claims that none of his European interlocutors, who he met in Tirana at a European Political Community summit on Friday, believe Badenoch will ever be in a position to reverse the deeper security and trade ties with the EU that he will launch on Monday.
An Ipsos/Mori poll this month found that the British public is now more likely to consider Reform UK (37 per cent) as the main opposition party, ahead of the Conservatives (33 per cent).
The most recent YouGov survey showed Farage’s party leading the polls on 28 per cent, with Labour on 23, Conservatives 18 and Liberal Democrats 16. Farage’s party won more than 670 council seats in this month’s elections, all but wiping out the Conservatives in traditional Tory heartlands such as Kent.
Starmer set out plans this week to tighten rules for legal migration, claiming that Britain risked becoming an “island of strangers”, a phrase that critics claimed had echoes of Enoch Powell’s infamous “rivers of blood” speech. Downing Street has pushed back on the claim.
Starmer is also discussing with unnamed third countries a plan to create “returns hubs” to allow Britain to quickly deport failed asylum seekers, although embarrassingly Albanian prime minister Edi Rama said his country would not be part of it.
The prime minister’s tougher stance on migration and his decision to press ahead with contentious welfare cuts — widely seen as a tack to the right — has done nothing to arrest his plummeting personal approval ratings, with Labour voters turning away from him in droves, according to YouGov.
A new poll published on Friday found that Starmer’s net favourability rating dropped 12 points in a month to -46, his lowest level ever, including a 34 point drop among people who voted Labour in last year’s election.
Meanwhile, he remains badly exposed to Farage’s criticisms that he has not brought illegal migration under control; the Reform UK leader this week called for a “national emergency” to be declared because of high levels of channel crossings.
In spite of Starmer’s pledge to “smash the gangs” fuelling the transport of asylum seekers across the channel, 2025 has seen the highest levels of small boat crossings on record.
A total of 12,700 people have arrived on small boats this year, up 33 per cent on the same period last year, and Starmer has been warned by colleagues not to expect any early cuts to numbers.
Government insiders admit that the problem is “endemic”, that criminal gangs are well entrenched, and that intensified international co-operation to tackle the problem would take time to yield results.
There are also concerns over a big increase in arrivals from the Horn of Africa, including from Eritrea and Somalia, and that migrants from these countries are willing to take greater risks to reach Britain, crowding into boats.
For Starmer it is a reminder that identifying a problem is not the same as dealing with it, whether it is tackling high levels of net migration or trying to defeat the political parties which thrive on it.
