When dealing with an insurgent political party, it is crucial for them to maintain discipline and unity. However, the Reform party, which just a week ago showed promise in potentially forming the next Government, is now on the brink of falling apart.
The ongoing back-and-forth within the party is being watched with interest by senior members of both the Conservative and Labour parties. This internal strife sheds light on the larger battle taking place within Britain’s emerging populist movement.
The turmoil within the Reform party began last Wednesday at 5 pm when an interview with Lowe was published exclusively on Mail+. The interview later appeared in the Daily Mail the next morning.
Lowe, 67, a businessman worth £30million who still employs some 350 people, complained to me of leader Nigel Farage’s ‘messianic’ style, sniffed that Reform was still a ‘protest party’ and declared that he wasn’t sure Farage could ‘deliver the goods’ and become prime minister.
Farage instantly took to the airwaves, claiming that Lowe’s criticism was ‘utterly and completely wrong’ and adding witheringly: ‘Perhaps he wants to be prime minister. Most people in politics do.’
Lowe, a former chairman of Southampton FC, initially appeared relaxed about the growing furore, with a friend of his telling me: ‘This Reform row is a walk in the park compared to running a football club.’
But I can reveal that he did not hear a word from Reform’s senior leadership, including Farage, until last night’s extraordinary statement against Lowe was released by party chairman Zia Yusuf and chief whip Lee Anderson.
The allegations would of course be devastating if ever proved, from ‘workplace bullying’ to ‘derogatory and discriminatory remarks … targeting of female staff [and] threats of physical violence’.
Rupert Lowe’s interview with Andrew Pierce seems to have caused an implosion for Reform UK
One of Mr Lowe’s friends last night described Nigel Farage as not ‘the messiah’ but instead as ‘a very naught boy’
Mr Lowe and his wife Nicky during the General Election last July, in which he became Great Yarmouth’s MP
Lowe instantly responded with his own blast, vehemently denying the claims as ‘outrageous and entirely untrue’ and insisting ‘there is no credible evidence against me’. Minutes later, he was stripped of the Reform whip.
Last night, a close friend of Lowe told me that he had been the victim of a ‘dirty tricks campaign’, adding bitterly: ‘This will cut the throat of Reform.’
They went on: ‘Rupert Lowe questioned in your interview whether Nigel had the judgment and the character to become prime minister. I think we all now know the answer to that.’
They added that the first Lowe knew of the alleged complaint about him to the police was when he read about it on social media.
Another senior Reform figure told me: ‘This statement from Zia and Lee, directed of course by Nigel, was a devastating misjudgment. It looks like an act of naked political spite given that it came so close to the Mail’s interview. I fear it’s now all over for Reform. What on earth was Nigel thinking?’
The crisis marks the culmination of a feud that has been simmering for weeks between Farage and his most high-profile ‘backbencher’. In January, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, frustrated at Farage’s principled refusal to embrace the hard-Right rabble-rouser known as Tommy Robinson, posted that the Reform leader ‘didn’t have what it takes’ and Lowe ‘makes a lot of sense’.
Farage took the snub in good humour – but is thought to have been privately furious with Lowe, who enjoys an enormous following on Musk’s platform X.
Social media now appears divided between the two men.
Strikingly, Lowe’s interview with me prompted a large number of negative remarks towards Farage on TikTok, where the Reform leader has more than 1.2million followers. Analysis by the Mail has revealed that out of more than 1,000 comments on TikTok after Lowe’s interview, just 4 per cent were favourable towards Farage.
Meanwhile, it’s worth pointing out that Lowe is far from the first person to criticise Farage for his domineering leadership style.
Last month, for example, it was widely reported that Farage had given up formal control of ‘Reform UK’, which had been registered as a private company at Companies House rather than as a traditional political party. This was presented as proof that he was ‘democratising’ the outfit.
Farage had been the majority shareholder of Reform UK, giving him huge power and enabling him to seize the leadership without consulting the members shortly before the last general election.
Yet while ‘Reform UK’ has been scrapped, I can now reveal that a new firm, ‘Reform 2025 Ltd’, has been registered at Companies House. This has two directors – and guess what? One is Farage and the other is party chairman Zia Yusuf, a close ally of the chain-smoking 60-year-old.
‘Nigel and Zia are still calling the shots,’ a senior Reform insider tells me.
Even before Lowe’s defenestration last night, some Reformers were deeply frustrated by the absence of a proper shadow cabinet or even a team of official spokesmen on key policy areas.
Farage often pointed out to them that a full shadow cabinet is impossible with only five MPs.
When Richard Tice was leader, he had a weekly meeting with top party members in his office on London’s Albert Embankment to talk about policy, membership, fundraising and media appearances. These meetings never happen today.
Another consistent complaint from Reform MPs has been that they find it impossible to see Farage, who still suffers from severe back pain as a result of his near-fatal plane crash during the 2010 general election campaign.
The catastrophic week for Reform verged on the ridiculous thanks to a serious blunder from Tice, now deputy leader.
Visiting Glasgow to announce two councillor defections, he was unable to remember their full names and what council areas his new recruits had joined from.
In toe-curling footage that went viral on social media, when pressed by the Mail’s Tom Gordon, Tice kept referring to the two men simply as ‘John and Ross’.
Reform’s ex-deputy leader Ben Habib is firmly in Lowe’s camp and tells me Yusuf now deserves to be sacked ‘without delay’, adding that the statement against Lowe was a ‘declaration of war’.
When Habib quit the party last year, again over Farage’s leadership style, his detractors insisted this was due to sour grapes because he had failed to be elected to the Commons.
A pattern of complaint against Farage appears to be emerging.
So what happens next? With Lowe now sitting as an independent MP, and retaining his huge social media presence, he can cause trouble for Farage, pending his legal troubles, of course.
Farage is undoubtedly wounded by this crisis but far from finished: he remains one of the most famous politicians in Britain, a plain-speaker who can go into any working man’s pub in Britain and expect a rapturous reception.
A veteran campaigner and a tireless operator, he has built Reform from scratch into an outfit with five MPs, to say nothing of its 212,000-strong membership (the Tories have just 120,000).
But last night, friends of Lowe told me they were furious that Farage had risked blowing up his own party following an apparent fit of pique.
‘The truth is that Nigel is acting like a dictator,’ said one. ‘He’s not the ‘messiah’, as Rupert called him, he’s a very naughty boy.’
