Reform's alpha males need to shut up and get on with the job

Telegraph

11-03-2025

A few weeks ago, a delightful, touching email landed in the Planet Normal inbox from someone who described herself simply as 'a frustrated teenager from a small town in Kent'.
Ellie (not her real name) was writing to tell Liam Halligan and me about a new concept her dad had recently coined: the Woke Cloak.
Said garment, similar to Harry Potter's cloak of invisibility, 'has become a key weapon in our family survival against the progressive left,' Ellie said. 'We now don our Woke Cloaks when leaving our home. This allows us to navigate life amongst the 'wokerati' and is particularly useful for me at school.'
Ellie's Woke Cloak performs a protective function. 'It allows me to observe comments from friends (and believe it or not teachers!) knowing that I am free from cancellation. But, sometimes, I think are there others also wearing Woke Cloaks like me, or are they just so brain-washed they don't understand or even see what their comments represent?
'I now poke my head out from under my cloak more and more when talking to my friends,' the teenager continued, 'always retreating under its safety before I say something that could be considered controversial. I could be cancelled just for sharing views I am perfectly entitled to have on topics such as immigration and women's rights to private spaces. I feel I should be proud of my country, but what I see makes me wince and cringe at the absurdity of some things that are going on at the moment.'
It should strike us as very sad, indeed deeply worrying, that a clearly bright and thoughtful girl should be too intimidated to speak her mind. Ellie and her family are not alone in believing that the only way they can navigate our society without getting in hot water is by hiding their authentic selves under a Woke Cloak.
Other examples began to land in our inbox after we read out Ellie's letter on the podcast. Last week, Laura wrote: 'Dear Allison and Liam, the Woke Cloak perfectly sums up how I get through my days. I am one of those dreaded public sector workers and in perhaps one of the most stereotypical woke professions, meaning I can't always say what I really think at work and have to hide behind my Woke Cloak.
'I enjoy occasionally putting my head above the parapet when exercised by some particularly crazy new diktat from upper management as they fall over themselves to appear progressive and avoid offending any minority group. However, I have no doubt my job would be at risk if I really spoke my mind – so much for free speech!
'I enjoy small acts of rebellion,' Laura continued, 'such as resisting adding pronouns to my email signature and listening to Planet Normal on my commute. I am sure there are many colleagues in my organisation who feel the same as me but we have no safe way to reveal it to each other – very 1984!
'I just want to assure you that not every public sector worker is a fully paid-up member of the wokerati, some of us are just Planet Normal citizens who need to provide for our families. So please don't hate on us too much.'
If you had to sum up the hope that Reform offers you might say it was to relieve Ellie, Laura and all the others of their fears; to put the Woke Cloak in the bin where it belongs. As Nigel Farage promises at the end of his ecstatic rallies, 'To give you your country back.'
I could weep when I hear Laura talk of 'small acts of rebellion' against the prevailing ideology, as if we were under occupation by some enemy force. Which, when you come to think of it, we pretty much are. Just consider the list of pernicious progressive nonsense this week so far:
The NHS pushes forward on a trial of puberty blockers for vulnerable children only months after the drugs were banned over concerns about their safety
Joanne and Adrian Fenton are fined £1,500 after an illegal migrant entered the UK by hiding in their motorhome. Do you reckon we can fine Border Force officials who wave in several hundred undocumented young males in a single day?
Crossbow killer Kyle Clifford was not required to attend sentencing for the savage murder of his ex-girlfriend Louise Hunt, her mum Carol and sister Hannah. The foul fiend refused to attend court in person or by video link and the judge declined to order restraints 'on the basis that the idea of a man in a wheelchair being put in restraints and potentially disrupting these proceedings ... is simply not appropriate or suitable'. Many will think holding a young woman for two and a half hours then raping her and massacring her, along with her beautiful family, was neither appropriate or suitable and Clifford is only in a wheelchair because he shot himself with the murder weapon, a crossbow.
The Sentencing Council, an unelected quango, rejected demands by the Justice Secretary to reverse appalling guidance which means that white criminals may well receive harsher sentences than ethnic minority or trans offenders. No shame at all about the fact this confirms we have a two-tier legal system.
Katie Amess has her petition for a full inquiry into the murder of her beloved father Sir David Amess rejected.
The Employment Rights Bill, now going through Parliament, forces businesses to monitor the banter, jokes and political views of their customers or risk being sued for 'third-party harassment'. A death warrant for the British tradition of 'avin a laugh.
Horrifying data obtained by the Centre for Migration revealed how up to a quarter of all sexual offences in the UK are committed by foreign nationals – a rate 70 per cent higher than the British population. Individuals from nations with the highest conviction rates for sex crimes were awarded over 50,000 long-term visas last year alone. Clearly, the Home Office believes that the increased danger to British women and girls is acceptable collateral damage for their idealistic open-borders policy.
I could go on, and on and on until every last hair on my head was torn out and my forehead was bloody from banging it against the brick wall. Who agrees with any of this stuff? Other than Keir Starmer's human rights legal mates and those in the metropolitan liberal echo chamber, hardly anyone. Yet still they impose it on an unwilling, frequently incredulous population.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why the alpha males of Reform need to stop clashing antlers, shut up and get on with the job.
Hang on, you say, can't we rely on the Conservatives to get our country back? Kemi Badenoch did announce this week that the Human Rights Act should not apply to immigration decisions – a change in the law that would stop people challenging their deportation on human rights grounds in the UK courts.
A welcome move, although the Leader of the Opposition stopped short of pledging to leave the ECHR, and migrants could still appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg – more vexatious delay, more lawyers milking legal aid, more finding against the interests of the British people.
Make no mistake, it is the electoral threat from Reform that is keeping the Conservative Party honest, forcing them to talk tough on immigration, and even obliging the Government to release videos of deportations for the benefit of Labour voters who have had enough.
It is odd, to say the least, that Nigel Farage, who with characteristic shrewdness made the small boats issue his personal crusade, is, according to Rupert Lowe, dialling down on the subject of deportations when the latest figures show record numbers of illegal migrants crossing the Channel – 4,131 between 1 January and 9 March, many now put up in hotels at our expense. Friends fret Farage is being badly advised by people with ulterior motives.
Lowe grew frustrated with the lack of policies, adopting a fierce 'mass deportations' stance on X, which played well with many Reform supporters, while allegedly displeasing the leadership, which is trying to appeal to a wider audience it hopes will propel it into Number 10.
I'm told that the weekly meeting of Reform MPs became so heated, with Lowe 'throwing his weight around' and shouting at Richard Tice, that it was cancelled. 'Nigel's team started freezing out Rupert,' says one insider. Things deteriorated in January after Elon Musk posted that Farage 'doesn't have what it takes' and the party 'needs a new leader'.
Lowe was so 'puffed up' by Musk's flattering retweets of his own posts that he made the mistake of offering a less than ringing vote of confidence in Farage. Had Lowe not himself been a big boss, a multimillionaire used to 350 employees doing his bidding, he could have used that opportunity to show some humility and get closer to Reform's top dog instead of picking fleas.
He could also have have dialled down his more extreme pronouncements, as colleagues requested, until the party had the luxury of government to deliver them. Farage, a far more sensitive man than many realise, dislikes confrontation. 'He pulled down the shutters', refusing Lowe's requests to have dinner.
In a recent interview with the Daily Mail, Lowe took it upon himself to announce, 'We have to change from being a protest party led by the Messiah'. It was an act of extreme political naivety as well as disloyalty. No leader would put up with it. Arrogantly he underestimated Farage's huge box-office appeal as well as the sacrifice and hard yards he has put in for 20 years, turning lost causes into proven winners.
There is some doubt, however, as to whether Farage approved the extremely harsh statement Reform put out about Lowe on Friday, including 'bullying' allegations which Lowe has since said related to another person entirely. 'However angry Nigel is, that's not him,' a friend says, 'he reads the room too well.'
Fingers are pointing at party chairman, Zia Yusuf, a former Left-wing globalist, who has been given the job of professionalising the party but is causing widespread dismay by 'decimating the branches' where perfectly good, albeit occasionally eccentric, volunteers are discarded without explanation.
Reform have been expecting to perform well in the local elections in May, even taking some councils, and have a chance of beating Labour in the forthcoming by-election in Runcorn and Helsby. A huge swell of support in Wales points to a remarkable breakthrough in next year's Senedd election, potentially breaching that impregnable Socialist citadel and foreshadowing a well-deserved Labour wipe-out at the general in 2029.
Everything was set fair. Now, because of a giant clash of egos between a businessman and a politician, Keir Starmer sits in Downing Street rubbing his hands, scarcely able to believe his luck. At the time of writing, Musk was said to be considering backing Lowe if he forms a new party. Nooo! Please don't waste your money, Mr Musk.
Nothing could be worse for the future of our nation. An enthusiastic following on social media would not translate into millions of votes for Lowe; his name is hardly known around the country and wounded feelings and vanity should not persuade him otherwise. A new party of the right could not be more wrong for this moment.
Over four million people did not vote to see Reform implode, nor did 220,000 who have signed up to help. Instead of trying to micromanage everything, Farage should have been the leader, a role he fulfils superbly, and told Lowe to go away and work on policies. The vast majority of Britons want all illegal migrants removed because, as President Trump's spokeswoman pointed out, people who enter the country illegally are 'criminals' . There is no point in Reform if that policy is disavowed, and every one of its members believes that.
'I came into this for one reason – to change the way our country is governed – that is it,' Lowe tweeted on Tuesday afternoon. I believe him. A decent, impressive man, he has been badly wronged, no question, but trying to bring down the party that can bring about that change is terrible also. That is what is at stake here. It will only give comfort to the enemy.
At this point, a woman – boy, could Reform could do with some of those – would recommend apologies, eating some humble pie (Greggs does one) and uniting around a common good. Set aside ambition, if you can, and sort out your differences in private, chaps. Think of all those longing to cast off the Woke Cloak and get their country back.