Well, isn’t it a glorious mess? Reform UK, that band of Brexit zealots and populist muckrakers, has picked the perfect moment to start clawing its own eyes out. Just as the spotlight begged for their next act, Nigel Farage and Rupert Lowe – two men who’ve made careers out of thumbing their noses at the great and good – have locked horns in a row that’s pure Jacobean drama: pride, treachery and a faint stench of fate gone off the rails. Dig beneath the tabloid froth, though, and you’ll spy parallel lives that make this bust-up less than a shock. With Labour and the Tories already twitching ahead of May’s local elections and the Runcorn by-election, Reform’s implosion could either torch their rivals’ hopes or leave them laughing over the ashes.
First, the dramatis personae. Nigel Farage, the smoking, drinking oracle of British defiance, has been rattling the establishment’s cage since John Major was flogging Maastricht, and still pretending that the treaty wasn’t a surrender. Farage is Britain’s political Lazarus: UKIP, Brexit Party, now Reform UK, each resurrection hauling a tattered legion of the disillusioned and hopeful behind him. Then there’s Rupert Lowe, ex-Southampton FC boss turned Great Yarmouth MP, a man whose bluntness could strip paint and whose business nous once kept a football club afloat. Both honed their edges in rough-and-tumble worlds – Farage in the City’s trading dens, Lowe in the gritty backrooms of Middle England. Both live to sniff out the system’s gangrene and bellow till the walls shake.
Their stories run on twin tracks. Farage’s CV is a scrapbook of valiant near misses and unlikely victories: European successes, a Brexit Referendum gained and won, but seven tilts at Westminster before Clacton threw open the doors of welcome. Lowe’s no stranger to patience either, lurking in commerce and sport’s shadows before riding Reform’s wave into Parliament. They’re cut from the same cloth: outsiders, irritants, buzzing like horseflies round the establishment’s seamy undercarriage. So when Lowe lobbed his Daily Mail grenade, it wasn’t just a jab; it was a gauntlet flung by a man who reckons he’s the sharper spearhead. Never mind that Lowe’s own past is chequered – he binned his Brexit Party run in Dudley in 2019, 24 hours before nominations shut, leaving the party high and dry, and last year he was bellowing in Doncaster for the Reform leader Richard Tice’s head and Farage’s return. Loyalty, for Lowe it seems, is a flexible friend.
The timing’s a peach – awful or brilliant, depending on your seat. Reform booted Lowe on March 7, over allegations he bullied staff and threatened party chair Zia Yusuf. Claims he trenchantly denies. The old fox, Farage, spots a threat a mile off: Lowe’s hardline stance on immigration and Twitter populism were stealing some thunder. This isn’t just vanity’s duel; it’s Reform’s soul at stake. Farage dreams of a big-tent rebellion to bury the Tories and govern the country; Lowe wants a leaner, meaner beast, one that growls loudest in Britain’s forgotten corners. He is a purist, but like most purists, destined for a political cul-de-sac. A right-wing Corbynista.
Reform’s rebel voice is growing louder. The party’s 14.3% in 2024 dwarfed the Liberal Democrats’ haul, though first-past-the-post stingily coughed up only five MPs. Since then, they’ve snatched council seats like a fox raiding hens – nearly matching the Tories’ tally since Badenoch took that cursed crown, and from a standing start. Polls show them jostling Labour and the Conservatives in a three-way brawl, leaving both old warhorses queasy. For Labour, Reform’s a vote-eating pest; for the Tories, it’s existential. May’s locals loom, and Reform’s knack for mining anger – over borders, green zealotry and a Westminster that’s more distant to most than Mars – could see them romp through the ‘Red Wall’, Kent and the East Midlands.
Take Runcorn and Helsby, where Labour’s Mike Amesbury, after thumping a voter, is quitting and forcing a by-election. Labour romped it in 2024; Reform trailed far behind. Now it’s a golden ticket – a chance to nick one against the wind. The Tories’ anti-Reform squad, led by Bill Cash, looks like a Home Guard tribute act. Labour are leaking faith faster than a holed dinghy, Starmer’s grey managerialism only partly pepped up by his Ukraine strut. Reform’s pitch – raw, brash, unbowed – might just tip Runcorn and rattle the Commons’ rafters.
But here’s the kicker: a fractious mob doesn’t win wars. Farage knows it, his Telegraph piece about ‘constant infighting’ was half plea, half swipe at Lowe. History’s littered with warnings: UKIP’s Kilroy-Silk meltdown in 2004, the Tories’ 1997 seppuku that handed Blair the keys. Lowe, now a lone wolf, is unlikely to hold Great Yarmouth, but Reform’s steam could sputter if the dirt keeps flying. Labour and the Tories are praying for this gift – a foe that self-sabotages. Millions of our countrymen and women are praying though that the Reform ship is righting itself. As a party, we owe it to them to do so.
Click here to subscribe to our daily briefing – the best pieces from CapX and across the web.
CapX depends on the generosity of its readers. If you value what we do, please consider making a donation.
