Now, the Reform UK row has moved far beyond allegations and recriminations between the party and Rupert Lowe. It has now evolved into a dispute over ideology.
Those of the so-called online right, an amorphous online subculture of right-wingers who support policies like re-migration, the repatriation of migrants back to their countries of origin, and who broadly support Rupert Lowe in this debate, are effectively claiming that Nigel Farage lacks ideological purity and that the Reform Party has become too soft on these cultural issues.
While I don’t want to be drawn into the personal dispute between Nigel Farage and Rupert Lowe, which I know many Reform voters, members, and activists out there will find deeply unfortunate and regrettable, I do want to say a few things about this ideological rift.
I think more than a few people out there might be losing touch with political reality.
Matthew Goodwin shared his views on the Reform civil war
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What some people online are suddenly and conveniently forgetting is that, at the last general election in 2024, Nigel Farage and the Reform Party were the only political party in Britain to call for the immediate deportation of dual nationals who had been convicted of raping and sexually assaulting British children.
A policy, by the way, that I advocated before the general election in my newsletter. Nobody else called for this. Only the Reform Party called for it at the last election.
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Furthermore, the idea that Nigel Farage does not care about the rape gangs is nonsense.
In reality, as early as 2011 and 2012, Nigel Farage was the only mainstream politician willing to discuss this issue directly, which he did in northern towns like Oldham and Rotherham, drawing attention to it on billboards.
I know because I was there at the time. Until Mr Farage started to talk openly about it, the rape gangs were really only discussed by the likes of the pro-migration British National Party (BNP), which polled just 3 per cent of the national vote at its peak, and Tommy Robinson’s English Defence League.
Tommy Robinson himself polled only 2 per cent of the vote in the European Parliament elections in 2019, losing his deposit at the same time.
Nigel Farage is the leader of Reform UK
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Both of those movements alienated the vast majority of hardworking, taxpaying, law-abiding British people who desperately and urgently want action on these issues.
They want an end to mass, uncontrolled immigration. They want the system to be more responsive and more representative of ordinary people, but they also reject racism and violence.
Nigel Farage, in sharp contrast, can both campaign on those issues and, as we’ve seen in 2014 and 2019, can also win nationwide elections.
The point is that Reform UK has been leading in the national polls. In fact, today, in another poll for More in Common, we see that Reform is leading the polls alongside the Labour Party, with Reform in first place.
There is a serious possibility in this country of a political revolution under Nigel Farage’s leadership of the Reform Party.
Those who are increasingly seduced by the erroneous idea that Reform UK is selling out really need to ask themselves a fundamental question: Do they want electoral irrelevance, or do they want political power?
Do they want the chance to genuinely change the direction of this country?