On Reform's 'civil war'
My thoughts
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Unless you’ve been offline for the last week then you will almost certainly have seen an outbreak of serious infighting among Reform Members of Parliament.
What’s it all about?
It began last week, when Great Yarmouth MP Rupert Lowe suggested during an interview that Nigel Farage has “messianic” qualities and Reform needs to move past being a “protest party” by investing more seriously in policy and planning.
Things then escalated very quickly —and not in a good way for Reform.
In the days since, party sources have variously alleged that Rupert Lowe has bullied staff, threatened Reform chairman Zia Yusuf, said he wants to “slit the throat” of the Reform party, and might even have dementia —all of which Rupert Lowe denies in the strongest possible terms. For his part, Lowe says it’s a “malicious witch-hunt”.
And now, in the last forty-eight hours, the dispute has moved on to ideology.
Pushed on by the so-called ‘Online Right’ —an amorphous, online subculture of right-wingers who support ‘remigration’ (aka the forced return of immigrants from Western nations back to their countries of origin), and who broadly support Lowe, the Great Yarmouth MP now suggests Nigel Farage is not serious about dealing with the Pakistani Muslim rape gangs, has “silenced him” over the issue, and censored Lowe’s calls for “mass deportations” which, Lowe says, “should be the default position of any self-respecting country”.
While I don’t want to be drawn into the personal dispute between the two MPs, which I know many Reform voters, members, and activists will find deeply unfortunate and regrettable, I do want to say a few things about the ideological rift. Because I do think more than a few people are losing touch with political reality.
What some people online are suddenly and conveniently forgetting is that at the last general election, in 2024, Nigel Farage and Reform were the only political party in Britain to call for the immediate deportation of dual nationals convicted of raping and sexually assaulting British children —a policy, by the way, that we first advocated right here on this Substack. Nobody else called for this. Only Reform did.
Furthermore, the idea that Nigel Farage does not care about the rape gangs is for the birds. In reality, from as early as 2011-2012, Farage was the only mainstream politician willing to discuss the issue directly, which he did in northern towns like Oldham and Rotherham, drawing attention to it on billboards. I know because I was there.
Until Farage started to talk openly about it, the rape gangs were really only discussed by the likes of the pro-remigration British National Party (BNP), which polled just 3.1% of the vote at its peak, and Tommy Robinson’s English Defence League (EDL), with Robinson polling just 2.2% and losing his deposit when he stood for election.
Both of these movements alienated the vast majority of hardworking, taxpaying, law-abiding British people who desperately and urgently want action on these issues and an end to mass uncontrolled immigration but who also reject racism and violence.
Nigel Farage, in sharp contrast, can both campaign on these issues and win nationwide elections, like he did in 2014 and then again in 2019. Indeed, he remains the only politician in British history to win two nationwide elections with two different political parties while also outflanking the establishment on Brexit.
The idea, fashionable among the Online Right, that Farage and Reform have since gone ‘soft’ on these and other issues is also misleading.
Again, here’s a reality check.
Reform is currently the only party in British politics that is unequivocally committed to leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), not least so Britain can more easily remove foreign criminals, stop the small boats, and regain control of our broken borders.
It’s the only party calling for an immediate 50% reduction in the amount taxpayers are spending on foreign aid. It’s the only party calling for an immediate freeze on all non-essential immigration.
It’s the only party demanding the offshore processing of illegal migrants and the removal of legal aid for non-citizens. It’s the only party calling for the immediate deportation of foreign criminals and the withdrawal of citizenship from immigrants who commit significant crimes.
It’s the only party calling for an immediate end to health tourism and immediate access for immigrants to the welfare state. It’s the only party committed to barring illegal immigrants who pass through safe countries from claiming asylum or citizenship.
It’s the only party committed to returning asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants whose claims are rejected. And in case anybody out there has forgotten it’s doing all this while leading in the national polls —something that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.
If this position looks ‘soft’ to you, if it looks like ‘selling out’, then I would kindly suggest you are spending way too much time on Twitter/X and too little time out there in the real world, speaking and listening to ordinary people.
Because what I see happening right now when I look at the Online Right is what’s known as a ‘purity spiral’ —a form of groupthink in which people are rewarded for holding increasingly radical if not extreme views while those who voice doubt, nuance, moderation, or who point to political reality, like the fact that the vast majority of people in this country do not support ‘remigration’, are punished.
Much like the Woke Left, which now finds itself completely adrift from the average voter, what you end up with is a dangerous ‘feedback loop’, whereby people on the Online Right —very few of whom have real world experience of campaigning at elections, winning elections, talking to voters, formulating policy, or working in government— are continually competing with one another to demonstrate the purity of their views and their opposition to anybody they perceive as “a sell-out”.
While they think they’re winning, racking up tens of thousands of likes and retweets on social media, usually from people in other countries who have no understanding of the intricacies of British politics and culture, all they’re really doing is demonstrating how adrift they are from the average voter, who has neither heard of them nor shares their views, while also making life for the establishment and the state much easier than it otherwise ought to be. It’s the opposite of boxing clever.
Take the issue of mass deportations, for example, which many people on the Online Right seem to think is a guaranteed vote winner. While it’s true that most British people would, like Nigel Farage and Reform, support the deportation of illegal immigrants —67% according to YouGov—things get much more complicated when it comes to deporting people who have lived in Britain for a long time and who, clearly, many people on the Online Right and perhaps also Rupert Lowe want to deport.
While close to 80% of Brits want to see immigrants who commit serious crimes and who ‘came to the UK as an adult’ deported out of the country, this support plummets to just 37% for immigrants who have ‘children in the UK’ and to just 27% for those who ‘have been in the UK since they were a young child’.
And when it comes to migrants who have committed minor rather than serious crimes, support for deportation falls even lower, to just 41% for migrants who came to the country as an adult, and to only 14% for those who have lived in Britain since they were children. There is, in short, little support for deporting migrants who have been in Britain for a very long period of time —even those who commit crime.
So, again, I would kindly suggest that if you think, like many people on Twitter/X appear to think, that calling for the mass deportation of not just illegal migrants and foreign criminals but legal migrants who have lived in Britain for most of their lives is going to inspire and rally the masses at the next general election then you are living in the depths of a purity spiral that has pushed you into Cloud Cuckoo Land.
This is the path toward electoral irrelevance; not political power.
So what we’re talking about here is not just a personality dispute; it’s about two very different visions of what this anti-establishment alternative should look like.
On one side are those who seem to think this movement should focus heavily on ‘mass deportations’, on words like ‘remigration’ and ‘repatriation’, should be led by people who most voters have never heard of, and who, as far as I can tell, have never spent any serious time campaigning offline, nevermind winning elections.
These people also appear to think they can win power while excluding the only man in this country from outside the establishment who has won multiple elections with insurgent parties while delivering Brexit and becoming a household name.
On the other side, in sharp contrast, are those who understand that this movement will need to be so much more than an exercise in ideological purity —who understand that to really change this country it will need to appeal not to a small rump of 3-5% of the electorate but the 32% that is required to win a majority.
A movement that can genuinely appeal to a broad, diverse, and cross-class coalition of voters who are drawn from across the country, who care deeply and intensely about the need to end mass uncontrolled immigration, fix our borders, reform the state, take on Woke, and reassert our identity, history, and culture but who would also run a mile from anybody screaming about ‘remigration’ and ‘mass deportations’.
This movement understands what it takes to win power in this country because this movement has already won nationwide elections in the past. This movement understands the intricacies of British politics and culture and where voters really are on these issues. And only this movement, I would humbly suggest, knows what is required to get into a position where it can genuinely save this country.
As always, let me know your own thoughts and comments below.
What ever the ins and outs of policy, it is a travesty how the Reform leadership have treated Rupert Lowe. Insinuating he has dementia is one of the most disgusting things I’ve witnessed in British politics. From the testimony of his staff and everyone who knows him, it’s clear he is not a bully and all these allegations have clearly only been brought forward because he’s seen to be a thorn in the leadership’s side. I’m not sure why he’s been perceived that way because it seems all he has been doing is encouraging the party to develop a strong policy team and a harder line on immigration (which is politically possible - look at Trump’s victory). I think Zia Yusuf has gravely miscalculated if he thought all this would go away by throwing Rupert under the bus in the manner they have. The whole saga has really shaken my confidence in Reform as a viable political movement and I know many feel the same.
Thank you for supplying the numbers, Matt. I take your point about Sargon etc being to the right of where the British public are now. And maybe I have disappeared into a purity spiral. But this whole thing, from Oakshott's smirks to the allegations of premature senility against Lowe, leaves a very bad taste. It fails the character test. Irrespective of which policies are electorally correct I, personally, do not want to be led by people like that. I am a Reform member but I'm thinking hard.