Reform's shenanigans are an inevitable tragedy

Telegraph

09-03-2025

I don't know if you've ever ever seen five MPs fighting in a phone box, but it's not a pleasant sight. As I write, Nigel Farage is throttling Rupert Lowe with the receiver, while Rupert tries to jab a 10 pence piece in his eye.
The civil war in the tiny party of Reform is both funny and tragic: consequential, because it was leading the polls before Rupert questioned Nigel's leadership and Nigel, it seems, responded with tact and humility by calling the police (truly the Right has gone woke).
Whether the claims against Lowe, of bullying and threats of violence, turn out to be accurate or not is almost unimportant; it's telling that they emerged shortly after he criticised Farage in public. I'm afraid Farage has form as a dictator. The studios of GB News are littered with people he fell out with then exiled, the Hamiltons having erected a Red Cross tent in the green room.
To paraphrase the sitcom Nighty Night, 'I am not a malicious man, and I will strike down the first person who says that I am.'
To be fair to Nigel, if you're loyal to him, he's loyal to you. When Reform's fifth Beatle, James McMurdock, was revealed to have a police record for an assault in 2006 , he rushed admirably to his defence. But insiders are worried that the leader's refusal to share one tiny shard of the limelight holds his party back from becoming truly parliamentary, with costed policies and a proper front-bench.
On the other hand, none of that stuff matters to the average punter. Opposition politics is a crude battle for attention: Farage is a rare star. If I were Rupert Lowe, I'd think: 'I only got elected last June by accident, thanks to Nigel, and now we have a once-in-a-generation chance to overtake the Tories. So I'm going to shut up and do whatever the boss says – walk his dog, wash his car – because any hint of disunity could sink the whole project.'
Be a team player. Be nice, like Richard Tice.
Ah, but there's the problem: the kind of citizen who wants to run for parliament, let alone for a long-shot party like Reform, isn't into team sports. He is likely an egotist, probably a crank.
Rupert Lowe is certainly enjoying being an MP, tabling hundreds of questions to ministers that civil servants grumble are a waste of money, and becoming Twitter famous – to the point that Elon Musk suggested he might be a better leader than Farage.
Why was never entirely clear; perhaps because Lowe is perceived as more sympathetic to rabble rouser Tommy Robinson, at a time when the online Right is becoming more critical of Islam, more militant on immigration.
It's interesting to note that the Reform blow-out coincides with the first recorded spat between Musk and the Trump administration he helped to put in office (at the cost of around a quarter of a billion pounds in donations). Cabinet members are resisting Musk's plan to sack vast numbers of federal workers, including from air traffic control (necessary to land planes) and veterans affairs (vital to winning elections).
Here's the danger of letting bright amateurs into politics. We live in an era when very clever people – mostly men, and men who've played Civilisation II a lot – think they can answer every problem with a wordy substack.
But while creative destruction might be useful in business, it cannot be applied to a state, upon which millions depend for safety and security. To win elections, you must both excite and reassure people, as Nigel is trying to do. Lowe, by contrast, has a Musky whiff of the radical about him. He has called for a million migrants to be deported. His hero is Oliver Cromwell.
Reform will survive precisely because Farage has such tight control over the party machinery, plus he still benefits from popular hatred of Tories and Labour. But the reason I'm not just amused but quietly angry about the Lowe controversy is because it suggests Reform is like all the other parties in Westminster, more interested in itself than the public, or that it lacks the discipline to translate goodwill into electoral wins.
Chaps, don't do this. Pull yourselves together and stop giving journalists things to write about.
Taking tea at Runnymede
Another day, another argument about the nature of Englishness. Anyone who says 'English isn't an ethnicity' hasn't seen me in shorts, and with the weather so balmy, I'm tempted to tear off my top and parade about the high street with a can of Stella Artois. 'Oh England, my lionheart.'
Instead I drove up the M25 last week to take part in a Moral Maze roadshow – I am ageing gracefully into Alan Partridge – and on route I passed something enticing called the Magna Carta Tea Room, at Runnymede. 'I must visit it on the way back,' I said to 999 's Michael Buerk, who replied with his usual dry wit, 'Yes, you can probably squeeze a column out of that.'
The tearoom had run out of cheese pasties, on a Friday in Lent, but the chef said he could offer me a 'vegan sausage roll that tastes just like a sausage roll' (I think it was a sausage roll). There I relaxed, beneath a cloudless sky, and watched dogs playing in the field where Magna Carta was signed, heralding the beginnings of democracy.
Or, as I like to call it, 'the place where things started to go wrong'. As you can tell, I really don't like Oliver Cromwell.