Something has shifted in British politics. You can feel it in the way Keir Starmer now writes to Labour members. His latest message did not sound like the steady voice of a man with a four hundred seat majority. It sounded like someone who has checked the polling forecast and seen a storm forming.
Labour HQ insists Farage is dangerous and divisive, yet Reform is climbing everywhere that once belonged safely to Labour. Working class communities, black and white, Asian and Afro Caribbean, are not flirting with Farage. They are moving.
Trump has set the precedent across the pond
I saw it myself only weeks ago in Jamaica. African American holidaymakers, all prosperous and educated, told me openly they vote for Trump. No hesitation. No embarrassment. A real estate operator, an oil man, even a turkey farmer with land and employees. Every one of them behind Trump.
Then Afro Caribbean British holidaymakers told me the same story about Farage. Some had already voted for him. They did not see a racist bogeyman. They saw someone speaking plainly about the state of Britain. You do not need polling data to understand what that means. You only need to listen.
Dig up 50-year-old dirt – or think of some better ideas?
The Labour leadership, meanwhile, is still trying to land knockout blows by digging up remarks from fifty years ago. Half a century. The country has moved on. People judge politics by what is said today, not by playground chatter in 1975. The attacks are bouncing off because they do not speak to the issues that matter.
Cost of living. Crime. Immigration. Housing. Wages. Communities left behind.
Labour shouts about Farage’s past while Farage talks about Britain’s present.
Starmer can turn it around
If Labour wants to stop the slide, it must stop lecturing voters and start listening to them.
The danger for Labour is not Reform. The danger is that Labour has drifted away from the very people it is meant to represent.
Starmer can turn it around. But he must stop fighting the election his advisers wish existed and start fighting the one happening outside the window.
