Richard Tice warns about ‘Starmergeddon’ but Reform UK will help Labour far more than the Tories

On the screen behind him, a mocked-up movie poster flashed up with the Labour leader emerging from a world on fire above “Starmergeddon” written in flames. “A risk near you in 2024,” it read underneath. 

Amidst the laughter from political journalists, Tice explained that a Labour government would lead to “a catastrophic cocktail of economic incompetence and cultural incompetence”. The problem with this warning from Tice is it’s very clear that by standing in every seat in Britain in the general election, Reform UK is highly likely to give Keir Starmer the keys to No10.

Reform UK is the new right-wing insurgency in British politics. Created out of the demise of Ukip, it was called the Brexit Party in 2019 and candidates stood aside for the Conservatives on the back of Boris Johnson’s promise to “get Brexit done”. 

This year however, Tice has said there will be no “special deals”. “The truth is the Tories are terrified, yes in the new year the special pleading has already started: ‘Oh, please don’t stand here, please don’t stand there, I’m one of the nice guys, I believe in everything that you believe in’,” he said. “You’ve all broken Britain, you’re all responsible, so there’s no special deals, we stand in every single seat in England, Scotland and Wales.”

His party is now standing at around 10% in national opinion polls - enough to have a significant impact on the general election. And it already appears as if Reform is taking far more votes away from the Conservatives than Labour. In the Mid Bedfordshire by-election, candidate Dave Holland got 1,487 votes, which was bigger than the slender majority Labour had over the Tories.

This is the first seat Reform may have helped Keir Starmer win, but party insiders tell me Tice is really targeting upcoming by-elections in Wellingborough and Blackpool South - two seats with strong Brexit votes. These results will provide another good barometer of whose voters Reform is pinching.

While Sky News reported that YouGov polling shows around one in eight 2019 Tory voters are planning to vote for Reform at the next election. Prof Rob Ford, political science professor at the University of Manchester, said Reform “support is likely to draw heavily from 2019 Tory voters, particularly in seats where the Brexit Party didn't stand last time”.

And what we know about the Labour Party’s current vote share backs all this up. According to elections guru Professor Sir John Curtice, Labour's support is still around three-quarters in favour of Remain. He explained: "Despite Sir Keir Starmer’s best endeavours, the structuring of the Labour Party vote, in particular with reference to people’s attitudes towards Brexit, is almost exactly the same now as it was four years ago.

"The Labour Party has, relatively speaking, gained ground on those who voted Leave in 2016. A chunk of those people, who voted leave in 2016, voted Conservative in 2019 and now would vote Labour, say they no longer believe in Brexit, they say they would now vote to rejoin. The Leave voters that Labour have got are not typical Leave voters." 

Curtice says that Labour voters are 75% likely to support the EU now, compared with 82% in 2019 - a group very unlikely to switch to Reform. And the Tories’ focus on immigration is only likely to help Richard Tice and his candidates.

Migration and asylum is the top issue for 18% of Labour voters, however this rises to around 65% for Conservatives - their biggest priority. Yet with immigration becoming Rishi Sunak’s sole focus, he’s only highlighting his own failures and pushing Tory voters towards Reform.

Prof Sara Hobolt, from LSE, explained this issue to a UK in a Changing Europe conference last month. She said: “The Conservatives have just handed them [Reform] the biggest gift by saying we are going to campaign on immigration, the one issue where they [Reform] might be able to attract voters.

“If you go into an election on the cost of living people might vote for them as a protest vote, but they are not going to make a mark. But if it’s all about immigration, you’re getting a party [Reform] that has a tougher stance on immigration and is a party that is not hampered by 13 years in government with immigration increasing.

“The Conservatives by making immigration salient they are thinking we are picking a fight with Labour, but they have potentially another flank to the right of them that can make a more credible case for saying we can do something about it.”

And Tice has certainly noticed this, and he’s taking no prisoners. He said today: “Of course, the biggest betrayal of all by this government is on immigration. They promised election after election, particularly when we were going to get Brexit done, that they would bring down lawful immigration. And yet they’ve deliberately done exactly the opposite. 

“They’ve betrayed the people, in particular they’ve betrayed Brexit voters and the working class voters. They’ve opened the borders to mass uncontrolled immigration that this country has never seen before, and economically and culturally it is not good for the UK.”

Tice can talk all he wants about Starmergeddon - but there’s only one party Reform UK is benefitting and that’s Labour. 

Ralph Blackburn is NationalWorld’s politics editor based in Westminster, where he gets special access to Parliament, MPs and government briefings. If you liked this article you can follow Ralph on X (Twitter) here and sign up to his free weekly newsletter Politics Uncovered, which brings you the latest analysis and gossip from Westminster every Sunday morning.