Starmer's putting Reform on steroids

 

How Labour’s political choices are bringing about their own demise

Matt Goodwin May 20 2025

Here’s a question I never thought I’d ask. Is Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer deliberately trying to increase support for Nigel Farage and Reform?

Because that’s the only conclusion one would draw after looking at the choices being made by Starmer and his team, many of which appear to have come straight out of the handbook on how to inflame a populist revolt against the system.

Take yesterday’s ‘reset deal’ between Labour and the European Union (EU). Curiously, Starmer and his team have decided to respond to the rise of a pro-Brexit, anti-immigration party that draws much of its strength from the working-class and disillusioned voters in coastal towns by presiding over a deal that appears hard-wired to push even more of these voters straight into Farage’s arms.

For a start, Starmer just sold the working-class fishing industry down the river, handing the EU twelve years of guaranteed access to Britain’s fishing waters. This violates our sovereignty, makes a mockery of our claim to be an independent nation, and locks future UK governments in to this absurd arrangement until the year 2038.

While Labour’s Islington set will never grasp this, much like they never grasped the political toxicity of taking winter fuel payments from British pensioners during the worst cost-of-living crisis since the Second World War at the same time as they are forcing taxpayers to subsidise illegal migrants, Starmer effectively just dropped leaflets over every fishing village on these islands with the message: ‘Vote Reform’.

And that’s not all. Contrary to embracing the potential of Brexit, contrary to seizing the comparative advantages that could exist, Starmer, who consistently sought to overturn Brexit, is now insisting Britain becomes a subordinate rule-taker on everything from food standards to energy policy. He just signed up to a deal that prevents us from competing with the EU in key areas and which forces us to accept rules that are made in Brussels with no democratic mandate here in Britain.

Britain will now be pushed into the EU energy market, overseen by unaccountable and unelected judges from the European Court of Justice, and, yes, that same energy market which just had major blackouts.

As Lord (David) Frost pointed out yesterday, the deal commits us to joining the single market for electricity, the EU’s carbon trading scheme, and a plan to put tariffs on “carbon-unfriendly” goods. So if you think energy prices are high now then get ready because EU carbon prices are significantly higher. Our spiralling energy prices have just been locked in at the European level. We are not taking back control; we are once again giving it away.

Starmer’s deal also commits us to tedious Net Zero obligations at the EU level, too, a reminder of all that was wrong with our EU membership to begin with —no matter what you think about these policies at the national level, once they are imposed on you at the supra-national level, by a distant and largely unaccountable elite, then you are locked in for the foreseeable future.

So, increasingly, as my colleague Fred de Fossard points out, Britain will now be locked in to the EU’s protectionist ethos which will not only discourage entrepreneurs from investing in our already declining economy but will force us to pay somebody else to regulate food standards and set our energy prices.

Put simply, if you ever wanted to find a way of boosting Nigel Farage’s appeal among voters who are already weary of distant courts and conventions, mass immigration, spiralling energy prices, and a professional political elite that has no serious understanding of the working-class then this would be a good way of going about it.

Because much of what Starmer is now presiding over is the very opposite of what Brexit Britain was supposed to look like.

Instead of becoming the free, dynamic, productive, democratic and confident nation-state that some of us still dream about, defined by low levels of high-skill and culturally compatible immigration, tight control of our borders, and real incentives for wealth creators, we are instead being further reduced to a controlled, sluggish, unproductive, and demoralised country that is defined by masses of low-skill immigration, has zero control of its borders, is now once again watching its sovereignty eroded by an unaccountable elite, all of which will put off entrepreneurs and wealth creators.

And this isn’t just about the Brexit reset. Look, too, at the trade deal with India where, again, Starmer and his team appear oblivious to what is driving Reform.

Clearly unaware that Farage’s revolt is being driven as much by a palpable sense of unfairness as concerns about immigration, Starmer completely failed to grasp what was immediately obvious to everybody else who took one look at that deal –that giving tax breaks to Indian workers that will not be given to British workers will not go down well in working-class communities that have already been smashed apart by mass immigration and hyper-globalisation.

Once again, it isn’t so much the detail that annoys millions of people out there; it’s the profound sense of unfairness that appears to accompany every decision Starmer and his team make —from warning endlessly about ‘Islamophobia’ while refusing to hold a dedicated inquiry into the mass rape of white working-class children, from selling out our national interest in Chagos for billions while breaking Labour’s manifesto promise by imposing new taxes on the British people, from taking winter fuel payments from British pensioners and imposing taxes on family farms while splurging £15 billion over the next decade to house illegal migrants, and from presiding over a judicial system that is releasing sex offenders early while refusing to release the likes of Lucy Connolly.

It’s all rooted in a palpable, overwhelming, and relentless sense of unfairness. And look, too, at what Starmer and his team say about the core issue that is driving Reform —immigration—compared to what they do in practice.

While they wax lyrical about wanting to reduce immigration and control Britain’s borders, their policies appear perfectly designed to do the very opposite.

Incentivising more mass migration from India. Decriminalising illegal migration. Refusing to control the borders. Expanding the use of hotels for illegal migrants. And now, this week, encouraging a wave of under-30s from across all 27 EU member states to migrate to Britain, who will put even more pressure on our housing market, infrastructure, public services, and the ability of out-of-work young British people to re-enter the labour market.

As even The Times notes, “it undoubtedly looks odd to be opening the door to tens of thousands of Europeans only a week after promising to cut immigration … the danger is that it reinforces the sense among many voters that Labour doesn’t really mean it when it promises to get tough on migration”.

It all appears to have been designed to further anger and alienate British workers and send Reform to new heights. And yet, instead of trying to address the concerns of these voters, instead of trying to apply the brakes, Starmer just puts the pedal down. He opens yet another door, insisting on yet more immigration. It is all so bizarre.

As was the spectacle, last week, of watching Starmer run around Albania in search of a ‘return hub’ that would take failed asylum-seekers from Britain only to be publicly and embarrassingly turned down by Albania.

Starmer could have had an offshore processing centre. He could have had an active deterrent for the rising number of illegal migrants. And he could have had a solution to the sharply rising costs of this crisis. It was called the Rwanda deal.

But instead of working with that, Starmer threw his toys out the pram and dumped the plan while having no alternative. And so, as we predicted, the small boat numbers rocketed which has again left Starmer looking utterly incompetent and Reform looking increasingly appealing.

The key point is that neither Starmer nor his team, clearly, have any idea about what is propelling Reform forward and how to stop it. Because if they did then Labour would not be presiding over these decisions which are now, very clearly, not only putting Farage on steroids but setting the stage for Labour’s own demise.

And if you want a sense of what’s about to unfold then just look at the latest local by-elections in England and Scotland, which few people have noticed despite them pointing to the conclusion Reform now pose a bigger threat to Labour than Boris Johnson ever did.

Astonishingly, in Labour-held Stoke-on-Trent, a few days ago, Reform came from nowhere to poll nearly 60% (!) of the vote to Labour’s 21%, gaining the seat from Labour.

And in Scotland, at a by-election in West Dumbartonshire, Reform just rocketed from nowhere to replace Labour as the second force, leading my colleague Sir John Curtice to suggest Reform is already a bigger threat to Labour north of the border than the rest of the UK.

None of this should surprise us. If Starmer and his team want to know why rapidly rising numbers of people are abandoning the establishment for Reform they should perhaps reflect on the choices they are making and look in the mirror.

Because, ultimately, when it comes to the rise of Reform and the reshaping of the political system Starmer only has himself to blame. He is not defusing this anti-establishment revolt that is erupting across the country; he is pouring petrol all over it.