Behind the Infighting In Farage's Reform Party.

On the internet, my opinion on this will likely rankle. In the real world, Farage is beyond reproach. Let me explain...

Some of you noticed a little brouhaha across the Atlantic this weekend, with a Member of Parliament elected under the banner of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party being suspended, with allegations flying back and forth between factions in yet another bout of pointless infighting in which the right loves to engage for some reason.

While many anonymous online X accounts appear to be taking Lowe’s side over his public spat with Farage and co, the party’s lawyers are almost certainly not, with Lowe having been referred to police over what the party calls threatening comments. There’s also a claim of harassment involving female members of staff in and around Lowe’s orbit, though these allegations are not leveled at Mr. Lowe himself, from what I can glean. It's all very messy.

Complicating matters further, Lowe has repeatedly failed to meet with staff at the party’s headquarters in Westminster, London, instead demanding dinner summits with party leader Farage while leaking negative comments about his leadership to the media. As someone who used to work under Farage during his UK Independence Party (UKIP) years, I can report this is a big “no-no” inside any of his organizations.

And so it should be if you ask me. If I found out those who work under me were briefing negative information about me to the press, they’d be sacked faster than you can say ‘Brexit.’

But Lowe’s online following, recently bolstered by some errant Elon Musk tweets, has the recently elected Member of Parliament for Great Yarmouth feeling emboldened about his own career prospects.

The 67-year-old former football (soccer) club owner and nursing home magnate has spent months infighting with parliamentary colleagues and questioning the party’s leadership despite Reform UK's record-high results in last year’s general election. Under Farage, the party is currently polling first or second nationally. Prior to his re-emergence as the party’s leader, the party languished in the single digits.

One new nugget I thought was interesting, via The Spectator, is the “recent awkwardness” over the party’s plans to tax renewable energy. “Lowe’s company, the mechanical contractor Lowe & Oliver, installs batteries for renewables projects,” Katy Balls reports. A conflict of interest if ever there was one – and on climate change, no less!

None of this, by the way, is to say that Farage is always right. I have plenty of disagreements with the man, all of which I deal with privately, as men should.

To a wider point: some of the disconcert is a consequence of Lowe-and-others’ claims that Farage is in some way “going soft” over critical issues like immigration. While nothing could be further from the truth (Farage has been the loudest voice on this topic in Britain for almost 30 years), there is an instinct in some quarters to remain “ideologically/rhetorically pure,” which comes at the cost of building and broadening the party.

Think of President Trump as a prime example of this. During his respective 2016 and 2024 campaigns, he was urged (especially by those in the DeSantis campaign, the pro-life lobby) to remain “ideologically pure” on a number of issues, not least abortion, IVF, and even the Arab American vote in places like Dearborn and Hamtramck.

But Trump zagged when the orthodoxy told him to zig. He understood that he had to win the election to govern, and that meant charting his own course apart from conventional GOP wisdom. Nigel is facing the same challenges today, as he tries to overcome a parliamentary party system explicitly designed to keep out new parties and movements.

That’s not to say you “say anything to get elected.” But it does mean you have to show the electorate a different side of yourself. Farage, who led a Brexit movement that polled in the single digits in the 90s to a winning referendum by 2016, is adept at this. And it shows by how Reform is now polling first in the nation.

I would urge the splitters and digital critics to rethink their hostility despite the unavoidable confrontations between the party leadership and Mr. Lowe. Frankly, with a parliamentary majority of just 1400 votes, which would almost certainly be erased if Lowe doesn’t have a proper party apparatus behind him, it would behoove him to, as we say in Britain, “wind his neck in,” and back the party and its leader.

I know some people feel differently. I can faithfully report to you that those people are wrong.