Come on Keir... be brave and be bold

FORTUNE favours the bold, goes an enduring Roman saying, and a poll for the first time putting the Greens under eco-socialist Zack Polanski ahead of cautious Keir Starmer and Labour is a wake-up call.

- KEVIN MAGUIRE

OK, this was a single survey, yet Labour MPs and ministers have grumbled to me for months they are haemorrhaging more voters, party members too, on the Left than they are on the Right to Thatcher fan boy Nigel Farage.

It's a reason Reform UK is ahead as the most significant minority in a fragmented political system.

Most of that anti-migrant mob's support is still sucked from Kemi Badenoch's ailing Conservatives.

But Labour is simultaneously shrinking as loyalists jump to the revived Greens and another slice may hop to Jeremy Corbyn's troubled Your Party when it's on ballot papers.

Even Ed Davey's Liberal Democrats, sitting pretty after collecting disillusioned Tory voters last year, is a minor recruiter from Labour.