Starmer chose the right time to confront intolerant Farage

There's a party game I've never played called Fuck, Marry, Kill. Before Labour conference, Keir Starmer will have been consulting with his closest advisers on how to play his own version of the game regarding Nigel Farage and Reform UK. This game is called “Accommodate, Confront, Ignore”.

- DAVID AARONOVITCH

“Ignore” had some attractions. Last week, John Curtice, that monument to psephology, advised the prime minister that to talk a lot about immigration or asylum (and, inevitably, also about Reform) was tantamount to choosing to fight battles on the enemy's ground. Far better to concentrate on the government's main tasks and many voters' main preoccupations: the economy, the cost of living and the state of public services.

At the conference, there were takers for this view. Reform may be buoyant right now, they were arguing, but it is still a party with just five MPs and led by someone who has never run anything in his life - a sort of right-wing Jeremy Corbyn. Best to spend the valuable attention that a PM's speech always gets by concentrating on your own agenda.

It was ironic to hear some journalists pushing this view, having in effect constantly pushed the Farage elephant into the political room and now demanding that the prime minister ignore it. But the polls don't allow it. Nor does the media's concentration on Reform voters and the Reform phenomenon at the expense of almost everything else. At some point, it had to be directly addressed. But how?