Nigel Farage has set his targets on Keir Starmer. (Image: Getty)

The Brexit champion pointed to the winter fuel allowance fiasco and “tax raids on the elderly” for Labour’s plummeting popularity.

Pollsters have warned Labour is facing a “very substantial threat” as it loses voters to Reform on the right and the Greens to the left.

“This is the most unpopular Prime Minister in living memory, the most unpatriotic Prime Minister in history; he just has to go.

“Voting to get rid of him is a big incentive, and let’s face it, in England, Scotland and Wales, the only party that can conclusively beat him is Reform. The Conservatives are just not in this race.”

Labour is widely expected to come third in the Welsh Senedd, which the party has controlled since its creation, and to lose to the Scottish National Party north of the border.

Labour also holds a majority of the roughly 5,000 seats on borough, district and county councils being contested across England

And Mr Farage told the Express: “I’m in the North of England today, I’m in a borough council today that Labour have 60% of all the seats and whether it is here in Lancashire, whether it is in the traditional heartlands of the North East, or the valleys of South Wales, you know, these are places they have held rock-solid for over 100 years.

“So the fact that Reform is taking on Labour in its historic heartlands is deeply significant at every level.

“Clearly, Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex are different electorates, but you know, the Tories tried in the case of those three councils to delay elections for two years in a row. They connived with a Labour Government to deny people their vote two years in a row, and only our legal action changed that.

“That gives us a bit of a head start, I would say, and they may be different electorates, but their concerns are the same. It’s about the economic, social, moral decline of the country – a nation losing a sense of what it is, about mass migration changing places beyond recognition.”

The latest YouGov poll, published on Wednesday, had Reform polling on 24%, five points ahead of the Conservatives.

Labour is struggling on just 16%, tied with the Greens.

Reform UK are unveiling a new slogan calling for voters to boot Starmer out (Image: Reform UK)

A year ago, Mr Farage said his party had to show they could be trusted.

Party officials said the average increase for the coming financial year across those authorities will be 3.94pc, close to the level of inflation.

In contrast, they said Labour councils are set to raise tax by an average of 4.71pc, Tory councils by 4.9pc and Lib Dem ones by 5.49pc.

And Mr Farage believes his council chiefs have demonstrated the party can deliver. “There’s never been more scrutiny on Local Government. I would say in the 10 majority councils that we run, we’ve managed to save £300 million in excessive expenditure, we’ve kept council tax rises lower than the other parties. I would say one year in, we are off to a good start.”

Nigel Farage’s plan to ‘humiliate’ Keir Starmer so the PM ‘can’t hold on any longer’

Nigel Farage once argued that a series of political defeats could place so much pressure on Keir Starmer that the Labour leader would eventually be unable to remain in Downing Street.

That prediction became particularly prominent during the turbulent months of 2026, when Reform UK repeatedly attacked Starmer over Labour’s performance in government and called for an early general election.

However, Britain’s political situation has since changed dramatically. Starmer resigned as prime minister in June 2026 and was replaced by Andy Burnham. Farage has consequently shifted his attention from trying to force Starmer out to challenging Burnham’s new Labour government.

The earlier campaign nevertheless provides an important insight into how Reform UK approaches political pressure: use elections, by-elections, local results, media appearances and direct attacks on Labour’s leadership to argue that the governing party has lost public confidence.

Farage’s original strategy

During the final months of Starmer’s premiership, Farage repeatedly portrayed Labour’s difficulties as evidence of a wider crisis of political authority.

In June, Reform published a statement under the headline “Nigel Farage: ‘Starmer’s premiership is over’”. The party leader told LBC that he believed Starmer would face a leadership challenge during the summer and predicted that he would not remain Labour leader by the party conference in September.

At that point, the strategy was straightforward.

Reform wanted to turn electoral setbacks into pressure inside Labour itself.

If Labour MPs became increasingly concerned about losing their seats, the argument went, they could begin questioning whether Starmer was capable of leading the party into another election.

Farage therefore focused heavily on constituencies where Reform had made gains or where Labour’s vote appeared vulnerable.

The 2026 local elections provided particularly important material for that argument.

The local election shock

Reform made substantial gains in England’s local elections in May.

According to contemporary reporting, the party won more than 1,350 council seats and gained control of 13 councils, while Labour lost more than 1,300 seats and control of 35 councils.

Farage presented those results as evidence that Labour was losing support in parts of the country where it had historically been competitive.

The language used by Reform was deliberately dramatic. Farage spoke of Labour being “wiped out” in some traditional areas.

But the significance of local elections has to be interpreted carefully.

Council elections measure local voting behaviour and can be influenced by candidate strength, turnout, local issues and tactical voting. They are not automatically equivalent to a general election.

Nevertheless, the scale of Reform’s gains gave Farage a powerful political argument: Labour could no longer assume that traditional constituencies would remain loyal.

The pressure on Starmer

The political pressure on Starmer intensified after the local elections.

Farage argued that Labour MPs would eventually have to consider their own political futures.

An analysis published by Al Jazeera at the time noted that Starmer’s authority had already been damaged by political setbacks and reported arguments that repeated defeats could increase pressure for a leadership challenge.

Farage himself went further.

His public message was that Starmer had lost the confidence required to continue and that an early general election was necessary.

In a June statement, Farage wrote that Britain was “broken” and called for a general election at the earliest possible opportunity. He claimed Reform was ready to contest it and argued that voters had already demonstrated their support for the party in local elections.

The objective was therefore not simply to defeat Labour in individual contests.

It was to create a political narrative in which every defeat reinforced the previous one.

Starmer eventually left Downing Street

The campaign ultimately coincided with a much larger change in Labour politics.

On 22 June, Starmer announced his resignation as prime minister after months of political pressure. The Guardian reported that Britain was heading towards its fifth prime minister in four years and that Andy Burnham was expected to replace him.

This meant that Farage’s original target was no longer in office.

The political strategy, however, did not disappear.

Instead, Reform redirected its attacks towards Burnham.

Farage’s September message was that Burnham had inherited a government without a direct general-election mandate of his own. In a Reform statement published on 7 September, Farage argued that Burnham had been prime minister for almost 50 days and challenged Labour to demonstrate what had materially changed.

That has become the next stage of Reform’s campaign.

From Starmer to Burnham

The change of Labour leader presents Farage with a different political opponent.

Burnham entered Downing Street with a substantial political profile after years as mayor of Greater Manchester. Unlike Starmer, however, he became prime minister through a change of leadership rather than a general election.

Reform has seized on that distinction.

Farage has repeatedly called for voters to be given the opportunity to decide the government’s direction through a general election.

Whether such an election should be held immediately is a political question on which the parties disagree.

Labour’s position has been that the government should focus on governing rather than responding to Reform’s demands for an early election.

Reform argues the opposite: that the political circumstances have changed sufficiently to justify returning the question of government to voters.

Polling complicates the picture

The polling evidence also shows why the political contest cannot be reduced to a simple story of Reform permanently advancing.

YouGov’s September 2026 favourability tracker found that 69 per cent of Britons viewed Farage unfavourably, compared with 24 per cent who viewed him favourably. YouGov said the 69 per cent figure was the highest unfavourable rating recorded for Farage in its ten-year tracker.

At the same time, the poll showed Burnham with a 46 per cent favourable rating and 39 per cent unfavourable rating, giving him a positive net favourability figure.

These are favourability measures rather than voting-intention figures, and they should not be treated as predictions of an election result.

They nevertheless illustrate the challenge facing Reform.

Farage has a highly visible political profile and a committed base, but his personal image remains strongly polarising among the wider electorate.

Reform’s financial expansion

Farage’s strategy is also being backed by a major expansion of Reform’s financial resources.

The party has received unprecedented donations from cryptocurrency billionaires Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne. The Guardian reported in September that the two donors had provided a combined £72 million and that Farage planned to use the money to expand the party’s professional campaign organisation.

Reform has reportedly planned to recruit hundreds of campaign managers and other staff.

That is significant because Farage’s earlier political success was often heavily dependent on his personal profile.

A larger professional organisation could allow Reform to compete more systematically in constituencies rather than relying primarily on national media coverage.

There has already been disagreement within the party about how the money should be spent. Some activists have argued for greater investment in grassroots volunteers rather than professional campaign staff.

The dispute illustrates the transformation Reform is undergoing.

The politics of humiliation

The word “humiliate” in the original headline reflects the highly combative language often used in political campaigning.

Farage’s strategy has been to portray Labour defeats as evidence that the governing party is losing its authority.

But electoral politics rarely works through a single dramatic event.

A party can suffer a major local-election setback and subsequently recover. Conversely, a party can perform strongly in one region without converting that support into parliamentary seats.

Britain’s first-past-the-post system makes geographical concentration especially important.

That means Reform’s long-term challenge is not simply generating headlines about Labour defeats. It is building enough constituency-level support to compete successfully across a broad range of parliamentary seats.

The Clacton example

Farage’s own political experience illustrates both the strength and limitations of personal campaigning.

After resigning as MP for Clacton in July, he fought the resulting by-election and won the seat again in August. He received more than 22,000 votes, while the contest was unusual because several major parties did not field candidates.

The result demonstrated Farage’s strong position in his own constituency.

But it should not be interpreted as a national measure of Reform’s support because the circumstances were highly unusual.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards also resumed an investigation concerning a £5 million gift after Farage returned to Parliament. Farage has denied wrongdoing and said the gift was personal.

These controversies have become another part of the political environment surrounding Reform.

What Farage is trying to achieve now

The central objective for Reform is no longer to remove Keir Starmer from Downing Street. That has already happened.

The party’s current challenge is to persuade voters that replacing Starmer with Burnham has not solved Labour’s underlying political problems.

Farage’s September campaign has therefore focused on questioning what Burnham has achieved since becoming prime minister and demanding an electoral test.

The strategy has several components: maintaining pressure on Labour, expanding Reform’s local organisation, using its new financial resources to strengthen campaigning, and presenting Reform as an alternative to the established parties.

Whether voters accept that argument is ultimately a matter for the electorate.

What is clear is that Farage’s campaign against Starmer has already become part of a broader political strategy. The resignation of Starmer changed the target, but not the underlying objective of Reform: to turn dissatisfaction with the governing party into support for a different political direction.

The language of “humiliation” may capture the intensity of the political confrontation, but the more consequential question is organisational and electoral.

Can Reform turn high-profile campaigning and substantial financial resources into sustained support across constituencies?

That remains to be determined.

For now, the political landscape has moved on from the question of whether Starmer can remain prime minister. Andy Burnham occupies Downing Street, Reform continues to challenge Labour, and Farage is attempting to make the next stage of Britain’s political contest a direct test of the government’s record.

The campaign that once aimed to force Starmer out has therefore evolved into something broader: an effort to convince voters that changing the Labour leader was not enough, and that the country’s political direction should be reconsidered at the ballot box.