"The government is failing and the Tory opposition is rubbish but we aren’t sure yet about Reform – they seem a bit scary – and we are happy to have the Lib Dems in our back pockets for a rainy day."
With the latest polls suggesting both Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch are struggling against the insurgent populism of Nigel Farage, The New Statesman's political editor Andrew Marr summed up the mood of many voters across the country.
What did the commentators say?
Both Tory and Labour leaders are "looking weak", said Patience Wheatcroft in The New European, but Badenoch "will surely go first".
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Her "strategy of not having policies is proving a short-term disaster, which should worry her because the short term may be all she has", said Marr.
Just over 100 days as leader of the opposition and Badenoch has so far failed to improve the Conservatives' dismal approval ratings and, critics say, failed to articulate what exactly the party stands for. Meanwhile, Reform grows ever stronger and presents a real right-wing alternative.
She was forced to issue a rallying cry to her staff on Monday while seeking to blame others "for not pulling their weight", according to Guido Fawkes. That comes after The Spectator – now edited by her former mentor Michael Gove – criticised her performances at PMQs.
There is still "time for her leadership skills to improve and for some enticing policies to emerge", said Wheatcroft, "but the prospects for such change are slight, and the Conservative party tends to be ruthless when deciding the future of a wobbling leader".
Having won a landslide general election victory just six months ago, Starmer is obviously in a stronger position, and "there are still four years for recovery – in political terms, a lifetime", said Marr.
"Patience – the resilience Starmer has shown – is the underrated political virtue" but unless he can tell a better story about what Labour are for, calls for him to go will only continue to grow louder.
What next?
The elephant in the room for both Labour and the Conservatives is, of course, Reform, which has a "plausible, credible and identifiable Roadmap to Power", said the academic Matt Goodwin on Substack.
As Badenoch shifts her party to the right, "there's the obvious danger that they get squeezed" or even worse "overlooked" entirely, said Sean O'Grady in The Independent.
For Labour, which recent analysis by The Observer found is at risk of losing dozens of seats to Reform at the next election, the problem of what to do about Farage is just as acute. That is why talk of a potential successor to Starmer has rounded on the ambitious health secretary, Wes Streeting, who "from the moment he arrived in the Commons in 2015 the words 'future leader' had been appended to his name like a Homeric epithet", said The Sunday Times.
"As one of the few members of the cabinet who's actually good at politics and taking the fight to the enemy, Streeting will be a formidable foil to Farage, who's used to not having his breezy assertions properly challenged," said O'Grady.
Whether Streeting gets the opportunity to go head-to-head with Farage in a future leaders' debate depends on whether Starmer can "change the political mood", said Wheatcroft. Otherwise, "his party might also start to look at him as a problem rather than a leader".
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