EXCLUSIVE: The Labour leader crossed the floor of the Commons for a conversation with the head of Reform UK.
Nigel Farage and Keir Starmer enjoyed a chat in the House of Commons (Image: Getty )
Sir Keir Starmer took the unusual step of walking over the House of Commons floor to speak to rival political leader Nigel Farage and some of that conversation has been revealed for the first time.
Speaking to Express.co.uk, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said Sir Keir had made his way across the chamber for a “friendly” chat after a session of PMQs.
Despite keeping the exact content of the exchange confidential, Mr Farage did comment on the nature of the conversation, saying: “Oh we had a little chat about this and that, but it was interesting wasn’t it (that Sir Keir crossed the chamber).
“It was quite overtly friendly. He was very, very friendly.”
To be expected, like many political issues, the pair were on opposite sides with Starmer voting in favour of the bill, while Farage voted against it.
Sir Keir might be wanting to learn something from Mr Farage as Reform have rocketed up the opinion polls since the General Election in July, whereas Labour’s numbers have plummeted.
Nigel Farage and Sir Keir Starmer were seen speaking to one another in the Commons (Image: PA )
Last week a new poll sent shockwaves around the Labour Party after it found Reform UK was one point ahead of the Government in public opinion.
Research by pollsters at FindOutNow put Nigel Farage’s party on 24%, one point above Labour on 23%. Although the survey did place Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative Party higher than both, at 26%, with the Lib Dems on 11%.
Speaking to Express.co.uk during a tour of his constituency Clacton-on-Sea, in Essex, over the weekend Mr Farage added that labour also had to worry about losing support to another party.
He added: “Labour, they’ve got similar nightmares (to the Conservatives) because you’ve got very significant Green vote now, it’s not going away, the likes of Bristol, Brighton and the big cities. I think that vote might even go up a little bit in the next couple of years.
The Labour leader was apparently “very friendly” towards his fellow leader (Image: PA )
“The Green vote is a hard left vote, the you’ve got the Gaza vote which got four independents, plus Jeremy Corbyn, next time they will be a lot more just because of demographic change.
“You’ve actually got the two-party system beginning to break down fundamentally before your very eyes, so the first past the post system too, that’s the really interesting thing if this was Europe with proportional representation (PR), this (the Reform result) would have happened 10 years ago, or five certainly.”
Under the First Past the Post system in this year’s General Election Labour won a huge majority with 411 MPs, but with just 33.7% of the vote. Reform succeeded in claiming 14.3% of the vote (higher than the Liberal Democrats), but the party received just 6 MPs compared to the Lib Dems 72.
Data from the Electorol Reform Society shows that if the election has been held under a Proportional Representation system, Reform could have romped home with a staggering 100 MPs, compared to 228 for Labour and 139 for the Conservatives.
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