In early June last year I had a reasonably agreeable meal with a bunch of Reform UK activists at a restaurant in Guisborough – the main town in the seat which I would be contesting for the Social Democratic party, Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland. There were four of them, united primarily by one thing – a visceral loathing of the Conservative party.
Beyond that they were basically anti-woke and economically dry, as we used to call it. But all that took second place to the animus against the Tories. I have met pink-haired, nose-ringed, utterly vacuous LGBTQI sociology students who were more kindly disposed to the Conservatives than this lot.
They were, then, the perfect expression of what Rupert Lowe last week called a ‘protest party’, except that back then they didn’t yet have a messiah. He came along later, transforming what might have been a very lacklustre Reform campaign ending, most likely, in no seats whatsoever, as Rishi Sunak had intended by calling an early election. When the messiah did turn up, they managed only five, even if their national vote should – under a decent system – have given them somewhere in the region of 50.
So both Lowe and Nigel Farage are right, in a sense. Reform UK is indeed a protest party led by the messiah. And Farage is absolutely right to insist that if he hadn’t upset the apple cart by announcing his leadership and candidacy, Rupert Lowe wouldn’t have come close to winning Great Yarmouth. There, you see – I have come to heal, to pour oil on troubled waters.
There are other disagreements, of course, and yet they seem footling.
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