Home / The Canary / Reform faces fresh threat as ex-ally hints at rival breakaway

Reform faces fresh threat as ex-ally hints at rival breakaway

Reform faces fresh threat as ex-ally hints at rival breakaway


Earlier this year, Reform pushed Rupert Lowe out of the party after he fell out with Nigel Farage. Now, their decision may be coming back to bite them on the arse:

With guys like this, it’s better to have them on the inside pissing out than on the outside pissing in.

Reform—A new Lowe

Reform suspended Lowe after alleging he’d made verbal threats against Zia Yusuf, the party’s chairman (they also called the police on Lowe). As the BBC reported in March:

[Reform] also said it had received evidence of “derogatory and discriminating remarks made about women” by Lowe.

Lowe has insisted the accusations, and his suspension from Reform, were a politically motivated retaliation for his criticism of Reform’s leader Nigel Farage in a newspaper interview last Wednesday.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, external, Lowe criticised Reform’s decision-making processes, saying Farage had a “messianic” style.

Speaking after this, Farage said:

The truth is that Mr Lowe has made some excellent interventions over the past eight months and helped to stimulate public debate on a range of pressing issues facing the country.

What many people may not have realised, however, is that in that time he has also managed to fall out with all his parliamentary colleagues in one way or another. We did our best to keep a lid on things but, in the end, containment strategies invariably fail.

Farage detailed a story of Lowe kicking off with then-transport minister Mike Kane. Kane had told GB News that Lowe seemed to “not be in charge of his own faculties” during the incident.

The problem, of course, is that we wouldn’t trust Reform as far as we can throw them. At the same time, we also have a hard time believing Lowe. He could be a victim of a Reform hit job, but because the guy is constantly presenting himself as a victim of modern life, there will always be that suspicion that he’s talking out of his arse:

The Lowe Party

The poll in question came from Find Out Now:

Reform have done a good job riding the wave of reactionary sentiment which has been growing on social media. The problem, however, is that they’ve been eyeing up a majority. This means that when the reactionary voters they’re courting shift rightwards, Reform aren’t always able to go with them.

As an example of this, while Reform are promising a hardline stance on migration, many of the people supporting them on social media are going much further than that:

If it’s unclear from the above, ‘remigration’ means deporting all the non-white people, including:

  • Those who are citizens.
  • Those who were born here.
  • Those whose parents were born here.
  • Those whose parents’ parents were born here.
  • Etc.

Lowe is benefitting from having the freedom to move with the fringe of the electorate. At the same time, that wouldn’t necessarily translate into electoral success. It seems like he could definitely bleed support from Reform, but he’d no doubt struggle to overtake them. Also, we already know that voters are prepared to work together to stop Reform; this would no doubt be even more true of a party to Reform’s right.

Importantly, Lowe would also have the same problem that Reform have now – i.e. his party would either have to become more and more extreme to keep up with the fringes, or he’d have to maintain some level of discipline, losing support to his right as a result.

Civil war

Increasingly, we’re seeing why it’s a problem for the right to keep pushing the most extreme narratives they can get away with.

If we were Nigel Farage right now, we’d be feeling like 2029 is a long, long way off.

Featured image via Public Domain

 

 





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