Sir Keir Starmer’s campaign to halt Nigel Farage’s march to No10 is now in full swing, insiders have told GB News, and the Prime Minister is deploying a tried and tested three-pronged attack in a bid to stifle Reform UK ahead of the Local Elections.
With Reform’s support hovering just behind Labour’s on 24 per cent, Starmer is all too aware that his unlikely electoral ally in the 2024 General Election now poses an enormous threat.
Despite being swept into No10 with a 174-seat majority, in part thanks to Farage’s decimation of the Tory Party, the Prime Minister has an eye on the 89 Labour-held seats where Reform finished second and the dozens more which could now fall into the populist party's hands.
Starmer is repeatedly attacking Farage on three core issues: the NHS, Ukraine and workers' rights.
Political players regularly test messaging before putting them to voters, with ex-No10 supremo Dominic Cummings running Vote Leave-style slogans while spearheading the 2004 North East Says No campaign.
During Labour’s Local Elections launch in Derbyshire this week, the Prime Minister made no bones about his own anti-Reform messaging and doubled down against Farage.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, speaking during the launch of the Labour Party local election campaign at a distribution centre for Peak Pharmacy, in Chesterfield
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Nigel Farage set out his stall in front of a sell-out crowd in Birmingham
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“They voted against fire and rehire,” he said. “They voted against scrapping exploitative zero hours contracts. They voted against sick leave and maternity pay. That's what they do.”
Starmer added: “And what about the NHS? They want to charge people for using our NHS. They claim to be the party of patriotism. There's nothing patriotic about fawning over Putin.”
In a sit-down interview with GB News on Thursday, Farage almost immediately fired back against Starmer.
“I’m pretty annoyed that the Prime Minister is reverting to outright lies,” Farage fumed.
Accusing Starmer of being “very scared” of the rise of Reform, the Brexit stalwart separately added: “What's really interesting is that the Prime Minister isn't really even bothering to talk about the Conservative Party.
“It's Reform. That's who the Labour Party are genuinely scared of. He's resorted already at the launch to outright Labour lies.”
And yet these attack lines have been long in the making, some even decades.
GB News has been digging deeper, hearing from players on both sides of the Labour versus Reform fight for the core of the Red Wall.
LATEST REFORM UK STORIES:
Nigel Farage out campaigning in Cambridgeshire
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Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer (left) and President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky speak to the media at the UK Ambassador's Residence in Paris
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Inside Reform UK HQ, Farage allies are clear that the electoral tide is turning to put them as the main challengers to Labour.
Reform MP Lee Anderson told the People’s Channel: “It's pure desperation from Labour who are running scared of Reform UK who will demolish the Red Wall at the next election.
“They can attack us all they like but what can they attack us on? They can't blame us for anything. Roll on May 1.”
And it would appear the attack on the NHS is a particularly sore spot in the spat between Labour and Reform.
“Labour has resorted to telling lies,” a Reform source claimed. “Reform will always keep the NHS free at the point of use. The NHS is broken and Reform will fix it.”
However, Labour insiders have told the People’s Channel that internal polling shows key swing voters turn on Farage once shown clips of his previous comments on the NHS, including in 2012 when the then-Ukip leader suggested moving to an insurance-based health programme.
“When his long-standing views on dismantling the NHS and replacing it with a private insurance-based system are exposed,” a Labour veteran claimed, “voters can see that would mean thousands of pounds in medical bills to see a doctor or to pay for a hip replacement or mastectomy.”
A Red Wall Labour MP added: “The messaging on the NHS is cutting through. We need to keep on with this though.”
Another Labour insider warned Starmer still needs to deliver on NHS waiting times and immigration to ensure the attack lines work.
Reform UK MP Lee Anderson during the Reform UK local election launch rally at the Utilita Arena
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Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivering a speech where he announced NHS England will be abolished
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“The NHS attack is certainly being brought up on the doorstep,” they said. “But it’s a tough time at the moment. Voters are angry and we need to deliver. The Tories didn’t and they were punished. If we don’t deliver it’ll be Farage who benefits.”
Despite sensing an opportunity on healthcare, Reform’s 2024 manifesto pledged to bring “urgent reform” to the NHS while keeping it “free at the point of delivery”.
The populist party promised to put NHS staff on a three-year zero per cent basic rate tax scheme, boost independent healthcare capacity and provide tax relief for private healthcare companies.
Reform also looked at cutting waste by targeting “unnecessary managers” and creating a new NHS voucher scheme to bring control closer to patients.
Meanwhile, Health Secretary Wes Streeting is also committed to reforming the NHS but through pooling resources across neighbouring hospitals to cut waiting lists and by delivering an extra two million operations.
Fears about Reform's position on workers' rights also appear to have some salience with voters in post-industrial Brexit-backing corners of England.
However, a Red Wall Labour veteran warned Starmer’s top team were struggling to chime with voters after slashing Winter Fuel Payments and putting pressure on businesses through hiking employers' National Insurance Contributions.
“Workers' rights has the ability to cut through as a major issue but the messengers aren’t very good at conveying the message,” they warned.
LATEST LABOUR STORIES:
Mark Arnull (left) with Reform UK leader Nigel Farage (second left) and party supporters
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Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer at West Regwm Farm in Whitland, Carmarthenshire
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From Margaret Thatcher in 1982 to George W Bush in 2001, leaders have also been boosted by the so-called rallying around the flag effect.
Jeremy Corbyn also suffered from the complete opposite phenomenon in 2019, with national security concerns directly knocking the now-disgraced ex-Labour leader's support.
However, almost irrespective of voters' expressed approval of Starmer's strong support for Ukraine, insiders believe Labour is unable to extract any political capital from the situation.
When asked about Starmer accusing Farage of “fawning” for Putin, a Labour MP admitted: “People hate Putin and they didn’t like to see Zelensky get bullied by Trump but there is unhappiness out there about the money being spent on supporting Ukraine when our own finances are so tight.”
Another Red Wall Labour figure appeared to suggest the issue of Ukraine was falling on deaf ears.
“People just don’t care about Ukraine or Putin when it comes to an election and these sort of negative campaigns rarely win anyway," they claimed.
Farage has been involved in a number of foreign policy spats, including with Boris Johnson in the 2024 General Election campaign when he was accused of suggesting the EU and Nato “provoked” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by expanding eastwards.
However, the Reform UK leader has since said Putin was “of course” responsible for the war and rejected Donald Trump’s description of Volodymyr Zelensky as a “dictator”.
The Runcorn & Helsby by-election is being earmarked as the first major test between Labour and Reform, with Karen Shore and Sarah Pochin polled as being locked in a knife-edge two-horse race.
Mayoral elections in Hull & East Yorkshire and Greater Lincolnshire will also provide even starker examples of a Red Wall fight, with the now-firmly Labour areas being home to voters who spearheaded the Brexit revolt of 2016 before siding with Boris Johnson in 2019.
JL Partners’s latest poll shows 11 per cent of 2024 Labour voters now believe Farage would make a better Prime Minister than Starmer, with just seven per cent preferring Kemi Badenoch.
A staggering 22 per cent of Labour voters also somewhat or strongly approved of how Farage is doing as the leader of Reform, only slightly higher than the 18 per cent who would consider voting for the populist party at the next general election.
A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent
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Sir Keir Starmer at the Organised Immigration Crime Summit at Lancaster House
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Discussing Starmer’s attack lines with GB News, JL Partners co-founder James Johnson suggested the Prime Minister clearly fears Reform under Farage.
“These attacks really show that Farage is showing up as a major red warning light in Labour’s polling," Johnson said.
“Otherwise the Prime Minister would not be wasting time or political capital on this. He’s become a serious threat and they’ve obviously noticed that.”
He added: “The aim that Labour will be trying to pursue is to say to those longer-term Labour voters, perhaps those who voted for Boris in 2019, that there is a disconnect between Reform’s values and their own, particularly on the NHS and workers' rights.
“The question is whether it’ll work. The struggle Labour has is that the values it has that are disconnected from voters, especially on immigration, patriotism and being straight-talking, matter more than the issues around the NHS, workers' rights and foreign affairs.
“Reform does have a disconnect problem but it looks like Labour has a bigger one.”
A Red Wall Labour insider also admitted: “Tackling migrant crossings is the way to stifle Reform.”
JL Partners's poll showed immigration is the second most important issue to voters at the moment, narrowly missing out on top spot to the cost-of-living crisis and placing well-above both health and the war in Ukraine.
And Starmer will likely face a shellacking from voters as Channel crossings continue.
LATEST MIGRANT CRISIS STORIES:
Nigel Farage has been in campaign mode ahead of the 2025 Local Elections
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Attendees during the Reform UK local election launch rally at the Utilita Arena Birmingham
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Starmer was this week told his small boats record was worse than any other Prime Minister since the crisis first rocked Britain in 2018.
A staggering 30,000 migrants have completed the perilous 21-mile journey since Starmer entered No10 last July.
Despite the deportation of 24,000 illegal migrants being seen as an opportunity for Labour, cutting Winter Fuel Payments, forcing farmers to pay inheritance tax and releasing prisoners early all played poorly with the electorate.
Successes, ranging from increasing the minimum wage to the Employment Rights Bill, were also offset by other controversial moments, including Rachel Reeves’s CV row and freebie-gate.
Johnson went on to warn that voters might express some Brexit-style scepticism when absorbing Starmer’s counter-Reform strategy.
The ex-No10 adviser, who claimed the title of being the world’s most accurate pollster after predicting Donald Trump’s landslide victory last November, told the People’s Channel: “Labour needs to be careful not to go down the scaremongering route.
“Voters have become very perceptive and aware of things that just don’t ring true and Project Fear prompted that concern.
“A lot of Labour voters targeted by Farage would have been Leave voters and will know what those two words mean and therefore they will be wary, especially in a world where they get lots of information from lots of different sources, of the veracity of some of those claims.
“It’s a sound strategy but because of Labour’s existing problems with voters, particularly on immigration, and general concerns about how true these claims might be, I slightly doubt its efficacy.”
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, is embraced by Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner prior to speaking at a distribution centre for Peak Pharmacy, in Chesterfield, Derbyshire
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Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and Doncaster mayoral candidate Alexander Jones along with council candidates during the Reform UK campaign launch and mayoral announcement
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However, painting the electoral contest as a straight shoot-out between Starmer and Farage could ensure Labour wins back disgruntled liberal-leaning voters currently looking elsewhere.
“Voters on the left - those going to the Greens and Liberal Democrats - appear more likely to tactically vote Starmer in that scenario because they fear Farage more than Badenoch,” Johnson said.
Starmer will be able to put his messaging to the test on May 1, with 1,641 council seats going up for grabs across England.
Electoral Calculus suggested Reform UK would win the contest before Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner confirmed swathes of voters would need to wait to go to the polls due to her plan to rejig local authorities.
However, Reform UK is still expected to win 474 council seats and gain control of Derbyshire, Doncaster, Durham and Kent.
As opposed to the 2024 Local Elections, when Reform UK managed to field candidates in just 12 per cent of contested wards, the populist party will now stand in 99.3 per cent.
There will be 30 more Reform UK candidates than those whipped by the Tories, with the populist party’s ballot paper lead over Labour stretching out to 90.
An excited Reform insider told GB News: “This is the first time since 1902 that a party has stood more candidates than either the Tories or Labour.”
