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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
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Polly Toynbee

From now on, Labour has one mission only. It must focus on saving Britain from Farage

Keir Starmer in Downing Street, 3 September 2025.
Keir Starmer in Downing Street, 3 September 2025. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

Labour has just one overriding task. Forget all the other missions and milestones: Britain faces a peril that was beyond imagining a short time ago. Saving the country from Nigel Farage is the urgent, patriotic duty of this government; it is vital that it prevents an extremist, racist, authoritarian takeover which would be against the will of the overwhelming majority of the population. Nothing else matters more.

The Labour government has come adrift. It lacks direction and purpose. Its many welcome policies are missing any thread to make sense of them. Now a new role and function have arrived, uninvited. It’s not a political choice but an obligation when the country is under attack from a poisonous enemy. Electoral malfunction risks gifting unrepresentative power to a nativist, xenophobic, divisive, anti-democratic, utterly mendacious party which spouts contempt for knowledge, science and expertise, let alone community and compassion, and calls it “common sense”.

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