The Tories are fixating on Reform. They should be focused on a far bigger threat | Martin Kettle

Ed Davey’s Lib Dems have fought a smart campaign – and it is they, not Nigel Farage, who have the pulse of middle England

In this general election, the Conservatives are supposed to be fighting a campaign on three fronts. One is against Labour, a second is against Reform and the third is against the Liberal Democrats. The Conservatives’ problem is partly that they are not fighting very well and partly that they are only fighting on two of the fronts, leaving the third unguarded.

If wartime analogies are your thing, you could say that the Conservatives have a Singapore problem. Before the second world war, the British empire armed Singapore to fight naval battles against Japan. Famously, most of Singapore’s heavy artillery faced out to sea. But in 1942, the Japanese army overran Singapore from the rear, coming in from the Malayan mainland.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

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