How far should PM push the ‘Farage boats’ connection?

That “gently” delivered salvo is only the latest in what might be called Keir Starmer’s “barrage Farage” campaign.

- SEAN O'GRADY

It has the PM target Reform UK, its policies, its values and its personalities with unprecedented, sustained and ever more intense bombardment from Labour in the last few days, to the point where the Conservatives only got one jokey reference – “remember them?” – in the leader’s speech. Starmer, rather, chose to deploy the loaded phrase “Farage boats” during an interview with Christopher Chope, political editor of GB News, which is more or less Farage’s personal television channel.

The slogan “Farage boats” has its demerits. Farage was, after all, the one who first highlighted the phenomenon a few years ago on the aforementioned GB News, taking his own boats out into the Channel, filming the Border Patrol vessels unloading them at Dover and kicking up a fuss about it.