Whether it’s Keir Starmer’s welfare U-turns or Robert Jenrick’s viral videos, parties of the left and right are scrabbling to respond to Farage’s Reform onslaught, says Emma Revell

Spending time away from the office when you work in Westminster is a strange experience. Either you keep watching the news and doomscrolling on social media, in which case you might as well still be in the office. Or you do manage to disconnect – but find that when you get back to your desk, the entire political landscape has changed.

Case in point: I recently took a short break in Cornwall followed by a work trip to Brussels, choosing option B of trying to actually disconnect. And in the week or so my attention was elsewhere, Nigel Farage appears to have become Prime Minister.

OK, not quite. But for a man who’s never been within 200 yards of Downing Street and leads a parliamentary party who could still all fit in one black cab, Farage is certainly more than capable of setting the political agenda.

Keir Starmer has opened the door to or actually announced U-turns on a couple of key policies, clearly driven........

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