Blair’s advertising guru slams Starmer’s lack of plan to tackle rise of Farage’s Reform
Tony Blair’s former advertising guru has warned Keir Starmer does not have the “urgently needed” plan to combat the rise of populists such as Nigel Farage.
Sir Chris Powell, brother of the Prime Minister’s national security adviser Jonathan Powell, called for a fundamental reset within the Labor Party, saying there were only three years left to stop the “new and terrible threat”.
Mr Farage, who has said he plans to spend £5m on May’s local elections, said allowing Reform UK to be seen as trusted leaders in government without sufficient challenge would make the party appear less threatening, but waiting and hoping they would fail was “potentially suicidal for our freedom and democracy”.
In a double whammy for the Prime Minister, a former senior aide also called on Sir Keir to lift the pension triple lock and break up what he called the “stakeholder state”, citing the “bizarreness of how Whitehall spends its time”.
writing for GuardSir Chris said: “Where is the large-scale counter plan urgently needed to thwart and fend off such an existential threat? It is simply not in place and does not even appear to be in the planning stages.”
“We are in a very dangerous time. We cannot allow Reform UK to operate freely and become entrenched and entrenched as a credible potential government in the minds of disappointed voters.
“The more unchallenged they are, the more threatening and risk-free they will appear to voters. Hoping that Reform UK and Farage will collapse or that the right-wing vote will somehow splinter is potentially suicidal for our freedom and democracy.”
The advice pouring in on the Prime Minister comes at a time when Sir Keir’s position is coming under increasing pressure, with Labor lagging behind Reform England in the polls and expected to suffer heavy losses in local, Scottish and Welsh elections in May.
At an event on Monday he is expected to highlight measures designed to tackle the cost of living, such as the latest cuts to energy costs due to come into force in April and the removal of the controversial two-child benefit cap.
A Labor source said the government was “tackling issues exploited by populists, particularly the cost of living”.
But Sir Charles, who runs the advertising agency that worked on Labour’s landslide election victory in 1997, warned that Labor’s social media engagement has so far been “small-scale” compared to Reform and that the “narrative” surrounding the government is often “more about its own failures and infighting than the struggle it faces against a populist surge”.
Sir Charles, who has launched the Winning Against Populists project, said the UK was now “a textbook example of an establishment party caught in the headlights as its populist rival deftly fills the void of voters’ bitterness and disrespect”.
Mr Ovenden, meanwhile, warned that the case of British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah was “a totem of the constant waste of time and energy by people obsessed with fringe issues”, with the government being invaded by “flim-flam”.
Mr Fattah, who returned to the UK after being released from Egyptian detention in September, was forced to apologize for comments he made online dating back to 2010, when he called for violence against police and Zionists.
Yvette Cooper has ordered an urgent Foreign Office review into “serious information gaps” about her case, amid growing calls for her to be deported after historic tweets emerged.
Don’t write TimesMr Ovenden, who left the government in 2017 after derogatory sexual remarks he made about Diane Abbott emerged, said: “Fattah’s sudden collapse into the public consciousness has revealed the sheer strangeness of how Whitehall spends its time.”
He argued that power had shifted from voters to groups “who have time, money and institutional access that have made themselves too important to ignore.”
He called on the government to roll back environmental regulations, cut welfare spending and remove the “triple lock” that guarantees pensions will rise by at least 2 per cent a year.
He added: “We don’t need to keep picking the pockets of the productive parts of our economy to fund inflation-busting pension increases for millionaires or an unsustainable welfare system.”
