The assumption of Nigel Farage’s pledge to field candidate in “every constituency in the country” (excluding Northern Ireland) is that this will have the greatest negative impact on Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party, with each competing for the “all-singing, all-dancing”  hardline Brexit vote.

It stands to reason therefore that journalists looking for a fresh spin to fill out a few more column inches will argue the opposite. So it has come to pass that the Brexit Party stands as a greater threat to Labour, appealing to Leave voters in their heartlands, and it’s the party that has the most to lose to the Turquoise Menace.

This could well be a little far-fetched, when you consider the mindset of many Labour voters that has survived the last century of intra-party disputes and a multitude of electoral disappointments.

It has previously been established by a recent YouGov study that there is a phenomenon of the ‘shy Tory voter’. Those who vote Conservative are among the least likely to disclose the fact with friends, family, and colleagues; only UKIP voters were more reluctant. Labour voters, meanwhile, were the proudest.

This is not necessarily because voting Tory is a dirty little secret among the vast cosmopolitan elites and shining metropolises of Britain, but that the typical Tory voter is less likely to discuss such things.

It seems a safer assumption that such a voter has a ‘keep soldiering on’ attitude with no real interest in politics, and even less inclination to air their linens in public.

Such a person would vote for the party which has long been looked upon as a ‘safe pair of hands’, accepting the line about being the ‘natural party of government’. Furthermore they might look upon Labour in the same manner – as a jittery pedestrian strolling through a park one morning would react to a particularly excitable Terrier.

In contrast, Labour is a movement and has been since its very earliest conception. People will vote for the Labour Party because their Granda marched from Jarrow. Many Labour voters have stuck with the party through the years in the wilderness, through the height of Blairism when the party was as Europhilic as Jo Swinson’s wildest dreams, and now through the current intra-party sparring that has taken place under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

Such people may have not be fond of the European Union, and may be actively against it, but they are even more actively against the Tories.

Stephen Bush, in a recent article for the New Statesman, suggested the Brexit Party appealed to people who were fans of Nigel Farage and his Alf Garnett act. Bush suggested that there was a certain set of voters of for whom their preferences for Prime Minister are as follows: “1. Nigel Farage 2. Labour 3. Gargling bleach 4. The Conservatives.”

Thus, as the Conservatives try to chip away at the majority-building potential of their main rival, it stands to reason that they would welcome another party doing the same, at no cost to them, in areas that they will never win themselves.

The last general election in 2017 did see a small swathe of Labourites flock to the Conservatives, presumably to see Britain out of the EU; though it saw just as many, or even slightly more flow in the opposite direction.

To reiterate, as much as Labour voters may dislike the EU, it in no way compares to their opposition to the Tories. Steve Richards, in his recent book The Prime Minister, highlighted this when he stated that the chief reason many Labour voters refused to back Remain was not out of some diehard Euroscepticism but because the campaign was fronted by the Conservative Prime Minister, and in some respects the 2016 referendum can be viewed as a referendum on David Cameron and austerity.

It seems a leap of logic and of faith to say that the Brexit Party will be a significant threat to Labour, as even in these volatile and divisive times when Brexit is the main political issue by a large margin, there are still issues such as food banks, housing, and the NHS that have been on people’s minds far longer.

With the first winter election for a hundred years, an election in the middle of flu season when the strain the NHS is under will be most evident, and a Conservative campaign led by arguably that party’s most divisive leader, it is difficult to see Labour voters straying from the fold in any significant numbers.