UK's Starmer takes aim at Nigel Farage as the Trump ally becomes a growing rival

LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer took aim at political rival Nigel Farage on Thursday, saying the hard-right politician would trash the U.K. economy through reckless spending.

In a sign of how Britain’s two-party-dominated political system is changing, the prime minister devoted a speech at a glass factory in northwest England to attacking Farage, an ally of President Donald Trump whose Reform UK party holds just five of the 650 seats in the House of Commons. Starmer’s Labour Party, elected last year in a landslide, has 403 seats, and the center-right Conservatives 121.

In a shift from Labour’s longstanding policy of ignoring Farage as much as possible, Starmer said the Conservative Party “is faltering” and voters might face a choice between Labour and Reform. The next national election is due by 2029.

Starmer branded Farage’s economic plans “ Liz Truss 2.0,” evoking the Conservative former prime minister who rocked financial markets and sent borrowing costs soaring by announcing billions in tax cuts without saying how they would be funded. She resigned after six weeks in office in 2022.

“It’s Liz Truss all over again,” Starmer said. “The same bet in the same casino. …. Using your family finances, your mortgages, the bills, as the gambling chip on his mad experiment.”

Reform got about 14% of the vote in last year’s national election, but it has surged to the top of many opinion polls. Reform made big gains in local elections this month, winning several mayoralties and control of 10 local councils.

Farage's party is targeting working class voters who once backed Labour. Starmer’s popularity has plunged as his government struggles to kick-start a sluggish economy. The government has raised the minimum wage, strengthened workers’ rights and pumped money into the state-funded health system — but also hiked employer taxes and cut welfare benefits.

Farage announced a slew of worker-friendly — and costly — policies this week, saying a Reform government would cut income tax for millions of people and restore a winter payment to help retirees cover heating costs that was cut by Starmer.

Independent think-tank the Institute for Fiscal Studies says the tax pledge alone could cost between 50 billion pounds and 80 billion pounds ($67 billion and $108 billion) a year.

“We know for a fact what happens when politicians say they are going to spend billions and billions of pounds that’s unfunded,” Starmer said.

Reform often contrasts Farage’s beer-loving, man-of-the-people image with the stiff, lawyerly Starmer.

Starmer pushed back on Thursday, stressing his own working-class credentials.

“I know what it means to work 10 hours a day in a factory five days a week, and I know that because that is what my dad did every single working day of his life, and that’s what I grew up with,” Starmer said. “So I don’t need lessons from Nigel Farage about the issues that matter most to working people in this country.”

Farage, who was attending a cryptocurrency conference in Las Vegas on Thursday, posted on X that Starmr was “resorting to dirty tricks” to attack him.

Reform UK chairman Zia Yusuf said the speech showed Starmer “is panicking because his awful government is now trailing Reform” in opinion polls.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks to workers during a visit to Glass Futures in Saint Helens, Merseyside, England, Thursday May 29, 2025. (James Speakman/PA via AP)

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks to workers during a visit to Glass Futures in Saint Helens, Merseyside, England, Thursday May 29, 2025. (James Speakman/PA via AP)

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks to workers during a visit to Glass Futures in Saint Helens, Merseyside, England, Thursday May 29, 2025. (James Speakman/PA via AP)

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks to workers during a visit to Glass Futures in Saint Helens, Merseyside, England, Thursday May 29, 2025. (James Speakman/PA via AP)

JERUSALEM (AP) — Over two dozen families from one of the few remaining Palestinian Bedouin villages in the central West Bank have packed up and fled their homes in recent days, saying harassment by Jewish settlers living in unauthorized outposts nearby has grown unbearable.

The village, Ras Ein el-Auja, was originally home to some 700 people from more than 100 families that have lived there for decades.

Twenty-six families already left on Thursday, scattering across the territory in search of safer ground, say rights groups. Several other families were packing up and leaving on Sunday.

“We have been suffering greatly from the settlers. Every day, they come on foot, or on tractors, or on horseback with their sheep into our homes. They enter people’s homes daily,” said Nayef Zayed, a resident, as neighbors took down sheep pens and tin structures.

Israel's military and the local settler governing body in the area did not respond to requests for comment.

Other residents pledged to stay put for the time being. That makes them some of the last Palestinians left in the area, said Sarit Michaeli, international director at B’Tselem, an Israeli rights group helping the residents.

She said that mounting settler violence has already emptied neighboring Palestinian hamlets in the dusty corridor of land stretching from Ramallah in the West to Jericho, along the Jordanian border, in the east.

The area is part of the 60% of the West Bank that has remained under full Israeli control under interim peace accords signed in the 1990s. Since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted in October 2023, over 2,000 Palestinians — at least 44 entire communities — have been expelled by settler violence in the area, B'Tselem says.

The turning point for the village came in December, when settlers put up an outpost about 50 meters (yards) from Palestinian homes on the northwestern flank of the village, said Michaeli and Sam Stein, an activist who has been living in the village for a month.

Settlers strolled easily through the village at night. Sheep and laundry went missing. International activists had to begin escorting children to school to keep them safe.

“The settlers attack us day and night, they have displaced us, they harass us in every way” said Eyad Isaac, another resident. “They intimidate the children and women.”

Michaeli said she’s witnessed settlers walk around the village at night, going into homes to film women and children and tampering with the village’s electricity.

The residents said they call the police frequently to ask for help — but it seldom arrives. Settlement expansion has been promoted by successive Israeli governments over nearly six decades. But Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government, which has placed settler leaders in senior positions, has made it a top priority.

That growth has been accompanied by a spike in settler violence, much of it carried out by residents of unauthorized outposts. These outposts often begin with small farms or shepherding that are used to seize land, say Palestinians and anti-settlement activists. United Nations officials warn the trend is changing the map of the West Bank, entrenching Israeli presence in the area.

Some 500,000 Israelis have settled in the West Bank since Israel captured the territory, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war. Their presence is viewed by most of the international community as illegal and a major obstacle to peace. The Palestinians seek all three areas for a future state.

For now, displaced families of the village have dispersed between other villages near the city of Jericho and near Hebron further south, said residents. Some sold their sheep and are trying to move into the cities.

Others are just dismantling their structures without knowing where to go.

"Where will we go? There’s nowhere. We’re scattered,” said Zayed, the resident, “People’s situation is bad. Very bad.”

An Israeli settler herds his flock near his outpost beside the Palestinian village of Ras Ein al-Auja in the West Bank, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

A Palestinian resident of Ras Ein al-Auja village, West Bank burns trash, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

Palestinian children play in the West Bank village of Ras Ein al-Auja, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

Palestinian residents of Ras Ein al-Auja village, West Bank pack up their belongings and prepare to leave their homes after deciding to flee mounting settler violence, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

Palestinian residents of Ras Ein al-Auja village, West Bank pack up their belongings and prepare to leave their homes after deciding to flee mounting settler violence, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)