These past few weeks have been grim. The world hasn’t felt less safe in decades. European leaders desperately scrabbling to secure a peace in Ukraine that isn’t a capitulation to Russia. A US manchild president who is giving a convincing impression of a Russian asset. Vladimir Putin struggling to believe his good fortune.
So a big thank you to Reform for providing so much comic relief. Never has the UK needed a good laugh more than now. Which isn’t to say that the very public squabble between Nigel Farage and Rupert Lowe was in any way unexpected. Given enough time away from dissecting the niceties of the Nazi salute – these things matter to supporters of Reform. Strictly arm out to the front, not the side – Nige can usually manage to fall out with anyone. Apart from Richard Tice. Dicky only exists as an echo to Farage. Without a mind of his own. His tragedy has been to be born a man of limited intellect and charisma.
To recap. Last Thursday, Lowe – who has endorsed Tommy Robinson and apparently won the admiration of Elon Musk and Reform voters who worry the party has gone soft on foreigners – gave an interview to the Daily Mail in which he accused Nige of acting like a second-rate Messiah and having no real interest in policy.
Now, Farage is nothing if not thin-skinned and wasn’t going to take that lying down. So he responded by going public with allegations of bullying and bad language against Rupture and withdrew the whip from his MP. Finally, all Reform MPs could happily fit into the back of a black cab again without anyone having to sit on Lee Anderson’s lap.
Since then Reform has been a party at war with itself, with Farage and Lowe trading insults via the media and X. It has been a joy to witness. The People’s Front of Reform up against the Reform People’s Front. Splitters! Lowe has insisted that the allegations weren’t made against him but against a member of his staff and that, in any case, they were entirely vexatious.
Not so, squeaked Nige. Reform apparently takes bullying against staff extremely seriously – who would have guessed that Reform would take HR procedures quite so seriously? Deep down, Farage has a desperate desire to win the approval of the wokerati – and had asked a KC to investigate the allegations. It was just a total coincidence – of course it was – that Reform had chosen to go public with all this on the same day that Rupture had dared to trash talk the Messiah.
Cue further mayhem. Nige then wrote a piece for the Sunday Telegraph, more in sorrow than in anger, saying what a shame and surprise it had all kicked off like this. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before, he sobbed. And it had been with deep regret that the Reform chief whip had been forced to take action.
Yup, Lee Anderson, who has form for telling the little people to fuck off, was shocked and saddened to hear that Lowe had used bad language and allegedly mocked women. All this was most unlike Lowe who was renowned throughout Westminster for his courtesy.
Lee may have said to himself – I can’t fucking believe what that wanker has done. I’ve got zero fucking tolerance for anyone who swears at colleagues. There’s a line here. He’s fucking dead to me.
Lee is now chief whip to just one MP. Maybe it’s a full time job making sure that James McMurdock doesn’t beat up another woman.
Lowe wasn’t going to take any of this lying down. He had also heard that Nige’s supporters were claiming that he had dementia. Though how would anyone necessarily know? Rupture isn’t noted for his contact with reality.
Then there were the allegations of racism that had been made against his own supporters who had never liked the fact that Zia Yousuf had been appointed as party chair. Well, what did everyone expect? Surely the whole point of voting Reform was to give your racism a free ride. Nigel had sold out the whole project by being too nice to foreigners. It’s come to something when Farage is the moderate voice.
Rupture came out fighting. He had spoken to the KC who had been hired to investigate him. For one thing the allegations weren’t even against him, they were against another member of his staff and the KC had said she was dismayed and shocked at the lack of evidence against him. Something that was later denied by the KC herself. By this time, it was getting hard to keep with the backstabbing and infighting within Reform. Just imagine if Suella Braverman had defected. She and Nige would have fallen out on day one.
Then the piece de resistance. Lowe had backup. Step forward Andrew Bridgen. Now not everyone would have thought that the former MP who was kicked out of the Conservative party for comparing the Covid vaccination to the Holocaust was the kind of credible character witness you would like. But beggars can’t be choosers. In Reform World everyone is a bottom feeder. Long and short of it was that Bridgen reckoned Rupture was innocent.
To end the day, Lowe conducted a media blitz. If you can count an interview with Dan Wootton on his YouTube channel as a media appearance. Wootton, it needs to be said, is the idiot’s idiot. A half-witted hamster masquerading as a discredited GB News presenter. There’s a lot of them about.
“Tell me that the allegations are untrue, Rupert,” Danny oozed. “I don’t believe them for a minute – I think you are a wonderful man – but I just want to hear from you that you also think they are untrue.”
Absolutely, agreed Lowe. He would never knowingly indulge in any unchristian behaviour. Apart from mass deportations, but they didn’t count. He only had sympathy for his former colleagues who had strayed from the path of righteousness like lost sheep. What Reform needed was more experts. Like him. And no, he wasn’t suffering from any health issues. All he had done was challenge Nige’s narcissism with his own.
“Tell me,” said Danny, breathlessly. “Has Elon Musk ever DM’d you?”
“Yes.”
Wootton allowed himself an explosive orgasm on screen. This was the kind of online contact he could only dream about.
The rest of the interview was inevitably an anticlimax. Reform had just eaten itself. It had been fun while it lasted.