Alison Rowat reports on Sir Keir Starmer's speech to the Labour conference in Liverpool. Did his long and winding address eventually reach the right audience?

Sean Connery won his one and only Oscar for playing a grizzled Irish-American cop (with a Scottish accent, natch) in The Untouchables.

Connery’s finest scene came when his character advised Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) how to “get” Al Capone.

“He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way.”

In Liverpool this week, Labour has been searching for its own enforcer, someone who can show the way in dealing with a not-so-little problem on the party’s doorstep. No, not Andy Burnham, the long-lashed, half-man, half-Furby Manchester mayor. He’s now back in his box, having tested the water on a leadership bid and found it full of piranhas.

Labour sees its enemy as not within but without, in the shape of Nigel Farage and Reform UK. Now 12 points ahead of Labour in the polls, if a general election were held tomorrow, Reform would all but wipe out Sir Keir Starmer’s lads and lassies and their built on quicksand mega majority. In Scotland, Reform threatens to........

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