Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O’Flynn

How Reform can survive its civil war

Rupert Lowe and Nigel Farage (Credit: Lukas Degutis)

After a spectacular week of feuding, opinion polls appear to show support for Reform UK remains unscathed. Reform somehow still sits at level-pegging with Labour – perhaps even a point ahead – with the Tories several points further adrift.

Yet anyone who thinks that the fall-out between Rupert Lowe and Nigel Farage can be dismissed as a little local difficulty which is now safely consigned to the past is liable to be disappointed.

Reports reaching the party hierarchy of recent branch meetings say that many grassroots members are ‘raging’ at the treatment of Lowe and seething at the treatment of him by Farage and party chairman Zia Yusuf. Lowe does not seem to be bluffing in his claims to have put ‘teams’ of lawyers on the case. There is little confidence that the party’s various actions and allegations against him, unveiled just a day after publication of an interview in which he criticised Farage directly, will be able to withstand such unsparing scrutiny.

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