Reform UK has sunk to a new Lowe. Writers worth their salt really shouldn’t kick off with cliches, but Reform’s current circumstances warrant them. Well-worn phrases wear well for a reason – they tend to be true.
It is a cliche to say that British political parties win from the centre. Tony Blair and Keir Starmer rescued Labour from the left, hoofed it back to the middle, and won four elections between them.
David Cameron hauled the Tories by the scruff of the neck away from the right, gave them a Big Society hug, and became PM in 2010 and again in 2015.
It is also a cliche to say that our first-past-the-post electoral system is unkind to small parties such as Reform.
Reform scooped 4,117,610 votes in July’s General Election but only won five seats. The Lib Dems secured 3,519,143 votes for 72 seats.
PA
Had last year’s vote been by proportional representation Reform would have around 100 seats now and Rupert Lowe would matter less.
As it is, his one-man rebellion against the leadership means 20 per cent of Reform’s Parliamentary party is in revolt.
Take the two cliches together and Reform began Parliamentary life with the cards stacked against them. Now they are facing the third cliche of politics – the one that says divided parties don’t win elections.
Politicians who get wound up by their own internal squabbles forget that the top priority for voters is sound economic management. Sounding off and trying to cut each other’s throats will never convince the electorate they can manage anything.
Yet Reform says they will form the next government. That was always unlikely as it takes a good ten years to arrive at fully-worked out and costed programme voters can believe in.
Now there are doubts Reform will even survive until the end of this Parliament in 2029. What started as dust up between big egos is fast turning into an existential crisis.
Only one thing could be worse than what has already happened, and that’s for Reform to carve itself in two. Right on cue comes bitter former Reform deputy leader Ben Habib with a meat cleaver at the ready.
‘No way back!’ Nigel Farage has ruled out Rupert Lowe’s Reform UK return over rape gang row
GETTY
He is now proposing joining Rupert Lowe to form a breakaway Reform party because, as he puts it, “the country is crying out for people who are solid.” Wonder what they might call themselves? Reformed? Reform Two? Reform School?
Because that’s what this feels like. Less a professional political outfit and more an unruly political playground. With a few black eyes and bruised shins to keep the school nurse busy.
Ben Habib is astute enough to know that should his new venture get off the ground the two parties would end up cancelling out each other’s votes and both would go under. Maybe that’s the idea.
As for Rupert Lowe attacking leader Nigel Farage publicly just before Reform’s launch of its local election campaign…what on earth was he thinking? “I’m in the betting to be the next prime minister,” he chirruped. Alice in Wonderland is the only bookie you’d find that in.
Reform bigwigs clumsily responded with allegations of bullying in Mr Lowe’s office and threats to chairman Zia Yusuf’s person, all hotly denied. And both sides have been tasering the other with accusations ever since.
If Reform carries on like this it will go the same way as the Social Democrats did in the 1980s, and they had a more promising start.
LATEST MEMBERSHIP OPINION:
Suspended Rupert Lowe has refused to rule out joining Tory party as MP eager to ‘keep options open’
Getty
Founded in 1981 by a Gang of Four ex-Labour Cabinet big hitters – David Owen, Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers – the SDP really did look for a while like they would break the mould of British politics.
Yet they never broke through despite winning 25 per cent of the vote in the 1983 General Election, roughly where Reform is in the polls now.
Even though the SDP had bags of political muscle it lacked grassroots national organisation (just like Reform) which is why it formed an alliance with the long-standing Liberal Party.
It was not enough. David Owen and Roy Jenkins fell out over leadership and strategy (sound familiar?) and by 1987 the party was disintegrating and, the following year, was swallowed up by the Libs.
Its only legacy was to help pave the way for Tony Blair and New Labour.
Perhaps that will be Nigel Farage’s destiny. To walk another up the political aisle. Or to use a final cliche, always the bridesmaid but never the bride.