Well, that didn’t take long. Despite much talk of professionalisation, Nigel Farage’s latest political outfit is following the pattern of the parties that came before: infighting. On Friday night, the Reform party stripped one of its five MPs, Rupert Lowe, of the whip after referring him to the police. Lowe stands accused of workplace bullying and threatening behaviour towards party chair Zia Yusuf. In turn, the MP for Great Yarmouth denies all the claims and accused Farage and his allies of embarking on a ‘vindictive witch hunt’. Three days on and there is little sign of the row dying down with more accusations over the weekend – including that Lowe had annoyed colleagues by going too far in his calls for mass deportations.
As James and I reported last month for The Spectator cover ‘Nigel’s Gang’, tension between Farage and Lowe has been evident for some time. Both are veteran Eurosceptics from the mid-1990s; vintage Referendum leaflets show a 39-year-old Lowe urging Cotswold voters to ‘put country before party’. Staff complain that Lowe is not a team player and impossible to control. There was recent awkwardness at Tice’s plans to tax renewable energy; Lowe’s company, the mechanical contractor Lowe & Oliver, installs batteries for renewables projects. Speaking last month, former Reform spin doctor Gawain Towler told The Spectator: ‘They don’t see eye to eye on everything. But they understand that to win they have to work together.’
Now, both men over the weekend admitted – separately – that infighting is destructive and the party must be united. The question is whether they can find a way to work together once more or whether ‘unity‘ in Reform means the party pressing on without Lowe. Party figures strongly deny the idea they have ulterior motives in their action against Lowe. Some have noted that the complaint only became public after Lowe gave an incendiary interview to the Daily Mail in which he accused Farage of acting like the messiah. However, Reform party sources say Lowe was informed of the investigation into his behaviour a week before his Mail interview – so the wheels were already in motion.
Still, it can’t be denied that the tensions between Lowe and the wider party existed long before these complaints. It did not go unnoticed among Farage loyalists that Lowe failed to offer the party leader the same level of support as other Reform MPs when Elon Musk publicly suggested that Farage did not have what it takes to lead the party. There have also been complaints that Lowe will go off script on party messaging. Yet he has proved very popular with the grassroots, receiving multiple standing ovations at the party’s conference in the autumn. There has been a sense that he has been building a following.
In the past, Farage has managed to shrug off dissenters with ease – he has always been the one in control. Could it be different this time? For now, Farage maintains control over the party, and is likely to for some time to come. However, there ought to be a warning shot to Farage in one of Lowe’s complaints. He says the party tried to silence him over his ‘outspoken’ views on migration. With some Ukip old timers complaining of late that Farage has gone too mainstream in pursuit of power, this could be an attack line that grows with time.
In the meantime, there is one winner from all this: the Tories. As one Conservative MP puts it this morning: ‘It’s been a rubbish few weeks for Kemi [Badenoch] but this is the best news she’s had all year.’
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