Keir Starmer has made a serious mistake. Ok, I appreciate that I need to narrow it down and be more specific: Starmer has made another serious mistake in his efforts to shape the choice on offer at the next election.

Over the last two years, his strategy has been to hype up the threat posed by Reform UK. That means presenting leader Nigel Farage as a viable prime minister and his party as potential winners of the election.

Starmer’s reasoning was clear and understandable. He wanted to force a binary choice on voters: Labour or Reform. Doing so would allow him to fill the absence of any positives about his own performance with negatives that many voters attach to Farage. For frustrated left-wing and centre-left voters, he hoped it would be a compelling argument to rally to the red flag, albeit for purely negative reasons.

It’s not an inspirational message: “Fine, I might be lame, but the other guy is even worse.” I’m sure the Government would rather have a story of successful delivery of their promise of change. But they don’t, and in the resulting vacuum, this was what they settled on instead.

Unfortunately for all of us, it has proved to be a serious misjudgement on two counts.

First, it meant using the commanding political and media heights of Downing Street to validate exactly the message........

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