'Keir Starmer is running scared of Reform UK and has launched project fear,' says Matthew Goodwin

When they told you that if you dared to challenge the status quo, if you dared to challenge the policy consensus in Westminster, there would be a major recession, World War Three, and economic chaos?

Well, welcome back to Project Fear, ladies and gentlemen, because that's exactly the playbook that Keir Starmer and the Labour government are now seeking to revive ahead of the next general election.

Their attacks on Nigel Farage and Reform today make one thing crystal clear. They're panicking. They're scared.

They can sense that their political project — which has given us mass immigration, broken borders, zero growth, soft-on-crime policies, two-tier policing, and all the chaos we see around us today — is now coming to an end.

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Keir Starmer said today that Labour represents the party of economic reality, while Nigel Farage and Reform represent the party of fantasy. But what kind of economic reality are the British people living with?

Last year, Labour's election battle promised tax rises of only £8.5billion, an extra £9.5bn in spending, and £3.5bn in additional borrowing.

Yet in their first budget after taking office, taxes surged by £40bn, and they borrowed £36bn more. What kind of fantasy land is this? What about growth?

The Labour Party inherited the strongest growth in the G7 when they took power in July last year. They then took growth practically to zero for the rest of the year.

At the same time, Labour smashed apart the working class in this country — from Tony Blair through to Keir Starmer. The very people they now claim to represent.

They flooded this country with low-skilled, low-wage migration, undermining the wages of British workers, smashing apart their communities, and enabling millions to live on welfare rather than getting off the sofa and going to work.

In Rachel Reeves’ budget, Labour did the one thing almost everyone agreed would be a disaster.

They increased National Insurance, making it more expensive for employers to hire British workers.

Then they cut winter fuel payments for pensioners, taking £1.5bn, while wasting £5bn on failing to fix our borders.

Then they took aim at our farmers. They forced them to pay inheritance tax, smashing apart farming families who have been here for generations, while sending billions of pounds to farmers overseas through foreign aid.

With Labour's new India trade deal, Keir Starmer and his government sold British workers down the river, giving tax breaks to Indian workers not extended to British workers.

Labour's EU reset sold out fishing industries across the country. They didn’t need to give the EU access to our fishing waters for 12 years.

And that reset forced us to follow EU net zero policies, continuing to devastate our energy industries.

Our alignment with EU standards means we're now set to be chained to their low-growth, highly bureaucratic, highly regulated model for years to come — not to mention giving European courts more influence over these islands.

The very thing the British people rejected in 2016.

And let’s not forget: Labour decided to hand over our sovereign territory to an ally of China, and pay them £30bn of your money for the privilege. So, who is living in fantasy land now?

If it’s between an ambitious economic plan like Reform’s — high growth, low taxes, getting people back to work, and ending mass uncontrolled immigration — or Labour’s dismal plan that’s devastating our farmers, fishermen, and working-class communities, I know which one I prefer.

And I know which one looks more like the reality I want to live in.