Starmer must learn to count Brexit's true cost

Although the quip “a week is a long time in politics” is generally attributed to Harold Wilson, it was first used by the US president Harry Truman, a somewhat more distinguished wordsmith than the ineffable Donald Trump.

- William Keegan

The past year has seemed an eternity in British politics. We have gone from confident predictions of a two-term Starmer government to panic in the ranks about the threat from Nigel Farage, the soi-disant people's champion.

Farage is a great poseur. Contemporaries at Dulwich College say his name used to be pronounced "Faridge" but he subsequently put on airs, adopting the French pronunciation. His opposition to our membership of the European Union did not stop him collecting a large salary from the EU and, although his championship of Brexit has proved an abysmal and costly failure, he breezes on, capitalising on the social and economic discontents that are the outcome of austerity and, yes, Brexit.

Farage and Reform UK have been far too successful in stirring up migration as a political issue, with the awful result that Keir Starmer was recently reduced to echoing Enoch Powell's notorious racial slurs on immigrants.

Before it cedes more ground to Reform, I suggest the cabinet reads