How soon before one of Reform’s MPs starts touting himself as the reform Reform candidate? A negative amount of time, it seems, with Great Yarmouth MP Rupert Lowe already relieved of the whip for saying that Reform is currently “a protest party led by the Messiah”. Yep: Jesus Christ Superkings.
Anyway, Nigel Farage has taken all this as well as you might expect. In terms of what’s happened since, with even Nigel judging that “things have got a little bit out of control”, I’m finding it quite hard to immerse myself fully in every angle. Mainly because I’m worried it’s going to be one of those stories that demeans men – and I’m a passionate supporter of their involvement in politics, whatever people are saying about DEI nowadays.
But the broad brush of it is: a party leader who wants to be PM is too much of an egomaniac to even handle having some MPs; some of his people who hate lawyers have called in the lawyers; some of his people who love free speech have been upset by some words; and some of his people who hate snowflakes have gone to the actual police about what they say is a bit of verbal. Then again, there is an alternative broad brush: Lowe is an old Radleian who admires Tommy Robinson; meanwhile, Elon Musk – a man who owns X but apparently has no access to Google – now thinks Rupert is the fairest of them all and that Nigel “doesn’t have what it takes”. In fact, according to a report in Tuesday’s Financial Times, Elon Musk’s allies suggest he would financially back a credible alternative party to Reform.
All this has outraged Farage, because he badly needs donations and isn’t currently getting them at anything like the rate he needs (he picked up £280,000 in the last three months of 2024, versus £2m for the Tories and £1m for Labour. Also, because he’s Nigel Farage. As so often in seeking the perfect commentator on contemporary British politics, I am drawn to Legend from Gladiators, who once remarked: “There is no I in team. But there are five in individual brilliance.”
Hang on – there have been even more developments in Nigel v Rupert. On Tuesday morning, Lowe’s Westminster staff countered alleged bullying allegations against the MP by putting out an adorably weird statement saying they love working for him. For his part, Lowe has issued an invitation to Farage that feels somewhat hilarious in these particular circumstances: “Please, let’s have dinner and resolve this in a manner that our members and the country would expect.” Half-cut in an ultra-metro-elite restaurant on someone else’s dime? You’re right, I would expect that.
Meanwhile, a senior Reform figure last weekend confided darkly: “[Rupert] has crossed Nigel, and the political world is littered with the bodies of people who have done that.” Mm. Not sure that’s the boast they think it is. Yet we do have to accept that violence, both figurative and literal, has occasionally been a feature of the 37 parties which Nigel has at one point or another led / founded / been associated with / been CEO of. But for the benefit of the lawyers, I want to be very clear that I agree entirely with his senior Reform ally: Nigel Farage is only a metaphorical psychopathic killer who cannot handle colleagues disagreeing with him.
Or, as Farage prefers to characterise the deterioration of relations with Lowe: “I have been surprised and saddened at this behaviour. Certainly, I never saw anything like it in the European parliament in 2019 when I was the leader of the Brexit party and Mr Lowe was an MEP colleague.” And yet, is Nigel quite such an innocent? In terms of vignettes that all this has exhumed from the memory hole, do you remember the Ukip punch-up in the Strasbourg parliament? This was during the Brexit years, and saw poetry-writing MEP Steven Woolfe flat-out collapse, shortly after a reported altercation with the party’s defence spokesman, Mike Hookem. Initial chronicler of the bust-up was fellow Ukip MEP Neil Hamilton, who rushed towards the cameras to play the chuckling man-of-the-world, declaring: “Steven picked a fight … and came off worse”. (Sorry Neil, but you simply CAN’T carry off talk like that when you wear a bow tie and sit on your wife’s knee.) Farage’s own dismissive comment on the incident was that this was just “something that happens between men”.
Much more to the present point, however, we now have to ask how the Lowe-Farage kumite will play out in Runcorn and Helsby. There is, of course, going to be a byelection there, after Labour MP Mike Amesbury was convicted of punching one of his constituents on a night out, which I believe started with him posing up with his good friend the local police commissioner. (There is nothing – NOTHING – wrong with our country right now.) Reform is in second place in Runcorn and Helsby, so the question is whether this public meltdown will derail the momentum it has enjoyed since the election. Lowe is certainly trying to make sure it does, taking to social media to announce: “I feel so sorry for millions of decent British men and women from all over the country who put their faith in Reform.” Tell you what, it’s great to find the much-loved former Southampton FC chairman on the side of the fans again.
Having said that … if you’d had a political Tardis in recent years, you could have taken someone from the not-too-distant past on any number of mind-blowing journeys into the batshit present. But I almost think you’d get the most poleaxed reaction of all if you piloted it back to Southampton’s Westquay shopping centre in 2009, and gave any random Saints fan a quick look at the future. Consider what you’d be revealing: “In 16 years’ time, the richest man in the world – who’s the unofficial vice-president to Donald Trump, yes, the one off the US Apprentice – will say that Rupert Lowe should be prime minister of the United Kingdom.” Rupert Lowe?! RUPERT LOWE?!?!?! I honestly think the resultant psychiatric eruption would blow the roof off the mall.
Yet here we all are. Listen, I’m not against the idea of personal growth, but it is some distance beyond wild that a guy who took Southampton football club into administration now reckons he’d do a better job with an entire country. And, it must be acknowledged, it says even more about the utter failure of the political mainstream that guys like Lowe now seem a possible throw of the dice for people who don’t feel their lives have been remotely improved in getting on for two decades.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
