If it is to succeed, Reform has to be more than a cult of personality

ADAM LIMB

This is my third time writing this article. I first drafted it when Reform announced a series of strange policies regarding energy, with the strangest of them seeming to harm the prospects of one of their rising stars. I rewrote it again following the Daily Mail interview with said rising star and the subsequent reaction from Nigel Farage.

Today is the last time I rewrite this article. As of writing, Rupert Lowe has had the whip rescinded from him. Reform appears to be purging its most promising new member. This may seem a shocking and foolhardy thing to do for a nascent political party, however those familiar with UKIP will know that its enigmatic leader is both its greatest strength and weakness.

This is something Lowe knows well. In his interview with the Daily Mail, Lowe made the following statements:

We have to change from being a protest party led by the Messiah into being a properly structured party with a frontbench, which we don’t have. We have to start behaving as if we are leading and not merely protesting. Nigel is a messianic figure who is at the core of everything but he has to learn to delegate, as not everything can go through one person […] So we have to start developing policy which is going to change the way we govern. I’m not going to be by Nigel’s side at the next election unless we have a proper plan to change the way we govern from top to bottom. We can’t raise the hopes of people who are so frustrated with the way we are governed and then flunk it.

Lowe’s assessment is correct — Farage is certainly a messianic figure. No-one can seriously believe that Reform would have seen the success that it did in the election had the party been led by Tice. It’s something of an open secret that upon Farage’s return and Tice’s obsequious abdicating of the leadership that Farage rewrote the entire manifesto. Farage’s idea of a second-in-command is not a capable ally and therefore potential competitor, but instead a seat-warmer for when he is out of the country or politics entirely.

These factors necessitate that Reform be structured around him, both because the mass of people that Farage pulls in are there for him, and because his own ego demands it. When Farage failed to win his seat in South Thanet, the only MP the party had was in Douglas Carswell: a Tory defector. Farage resigned as per his promise upon not winning his seat, much to the delight of Carswell. Only for Farage to return at the behest of the board. Quickly, a rift began to emerge between Farage and his one MP over the £650,000 UKIP would receive as a major political party due to its vote share. On top of this, other figures such as Patrick O’Flynn lamented the “inexperienced aides” that surrounded Farage and described him as “snarling, thin-skinned and aggressive”.

All of this ultimately weakened UKIP, leaving it largely unable to position itself as the natural voice for the Leave side of the Brexit campaign. This was ultimately for the best, as Cummings Vote’ Leave campaign (which famously avoided associations with Farage) did a lot to swing the referendum in their favour. With that, Farage left politics and the followers of the messianic leader were disowned and left in UKIP, where all of the downsides of Farage’s messianic qualities would be put on full display. Without a leader, UKIP quickly embraced its worst instincts. Tommy Robinson was permitted to join, and its former capable members of staff began to leave, with online entertainers coming in to play at being politicians. UKIP today has been headed up by a series of increasingly-online cranks who only see political relevance when they manage to tweet something offensive enough to fill a slow news day.

The departure of Rupert Lowe is a combination of all of these factors. Lowe internally pushed for the party to be more democratic, so that the swathes of people who flock to Farage could have an outlet for their views that may benefit the wider party. Meanwhile, Lowe competed with Farage to draw in his own crowds on X. For this, Reform would release a baffling declaration of policies. These plans would see a windfall tax on generated power, a solar farm tax, and a ban on battery energy storage systems. All of these are strange policies when you consider we already subsidise many of these things, and so the government would be giving people money to then tax it back from them. But don’t worry, Richard Tice later explained that these were a “direction of travel” and not policy commitments. So Reform will be travelling in the direction of banning battery energy storage systems, but not actually banning them, which is what you were supposed to get from a poster saying they’d ban battery storage systems. Got it?

No? Well what you need to know is that Lowe rather famously owns a battery storage company, and these policies looked very like an attack on him and his livelihood. This appears to be what prompted the Daily Mail interview, after which Isabel Oakeshott (Deputy Leader Richard Tice’s girlfriend) came onto TalkTV to sneer the following:

It’s really sweet, isn’t it? Poor little Rupert—he is quite new to politics. This is what happens to amateurs.

If the current controversy has revealed anything, it is how amateurish Reform are. Oakeshott is quite nakedly an attack dog for those at the top of Reforms. When a man who turned up to campaign for them was found to be making racist remarks, Oakeshott was there to suggest the man was an actor and imply it was a setup. When Ben Habib left the party, she was there to rebuff his remarks about the party structure. Now Lowe is for the chop, she’s there to mock him the day before it happens.

The personality of Nigel Farage compels him to oust potential rivals

That brings us to today. According to Reform, Lowe allegedly made comments about women and the disabled. According to Lowe, this information has not been provided to the King’s Counsel who are overseeing these alleged events. Reform, just yesterday, referred Lowe to the police over alleged violent statements he made towards Zia Yusuf, the party chairman. The comments were supposedly made in December, three months ago. All of this paints a fairly clear picture of the relationship between Lowe and Farage and consequently Reform: Lowe pushed for democratising the party, and began to win support online, and the favour of potential donor Elon Musk who then very publicly rebuffed Farage, solidifying himself as a rival. These posed existential threats to paranoiac Farage who escalated by putting out policies to harm Lowe’s livelihood and referring him to the King’s Council to embroil him in legal trouble. Meanwhile, the party sat on alleged comments made in December for three months until it was ready to pull the trigger. After his Daily Mail interview where he once again questioned Farage’s leadership and the structure of the party as a whole, Farage decided it was time to rid himself of Lowe.

Many will call this an “unforced error”, but an error cannot be unforced if it is inevitable. The personality of Nigel Farage compels him to oust potential rivals. This alone prevents Reform from being the next major right wing political party. A political party must solve the succession problem, especially one that seeks to replace the most successful democratic political party in human history. The Tories have shown their ability to survive and adapt to change. Leaders abdicate when they have to, and rivalries are expected, tolerated, and respected when a clear winner is announced. This does mean that some leaders, including the current one, can be unimpressive. This invites speculation that the party may not be able to survive when put against another with a more enigmatic leader. A week is a long time in politics because the lifetime of political relevance is so short. In a system with such strong selection bias — as Darwin said — it is not the strongest of the species that survives, but the one that is the most adaptable to change. The Conservatives can change. Reform can’t if it revolves around one person who cannot cede any power to a competent rival (or, as some of us might call them, ally).

In Q4 of 2024, Reform raised £280,000. The Conservatives raised £2m. Reform won a lot of votes, but they do not know where that vote is, nor have they advertised a job for a voter intention collections system. The people who voted Reform in 2024 will be looking to the party to show itself as an adequate opposition to Labour. The next election will not be about punishing the Conservatives as it (rightly) was last time. 2029 will be an assessment of Labour’s performance and who has become the natural opposition party. If this week demonstrates anything, it is that Reform’s main opposition is itself.

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This article (The assassination of Rupert Lowe by the coward Nigel Farage) was created and published by The Critic and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Adam Limb

Featured image: Reddit

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