Former Deputy leader of Reform UK Ben Habib has been left fuming at the latest changes to the political party.
This comes as Nigel Farage revealed earlier this week that he will be “relinquishing” control of Reform UK by giving up his majority shareholder position.
The party structure will change from a company limited by shares to one limited by guarantee, meaning members will own the party.
However, not all members are happy with the changes and former deputy leader Habib has criticised the “largely messy” change.
Nigel Farage has relinquished control of the party
Nigel Farage
Speaking to GB News he said: “If a leader is going to act with integrity it’s best he be held to account by the membership of his own party.”
He added: “There’s nothing like accountability and scrutiny and the knowledge that you will be removed as leader to drive you to behave with integrity, with purpose and fulfilling the promises that you’ve made to the people of the membership.”
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Habib asserted that the new constitution would not allow party members to remove Farage as leader, only to call a vote of no confidence, with the company’s board having the final decision.
“This is not democracy. This is not the ability of the membership to remove the leader. This is the technical ability of the membership to ask the board to please consider removing the leader,” Habib explained.
He went further, describing the document as “awful” and claiming it “could be picked apart in multiple different ways.”
He said: “It was a rehashed document that I had rejected a year and a half ago with a few changes here and there, which couldn’t have been made more than by a paralegal.
Ben Habib slammed the new structure
GB News
“It certainly had had not had the finest legal minds in the country on it.
!The document is very largely a mess.”
Habib emphasised that his criticism was not aimed at Farage personally, but rather at the party’s structure.
He said: “I am not seeking the removal of Nigel Farage. This has got nothing to do with Nigel Farage.”
This decision comes after Reform UK’s recent electoral success, securing 14 per cent of the vote share in July’s general election and gaining five MPs in Parliament.
Ben Habib claimed that the documents are a “mess”
GB News
Farage cited the party’s “coming of age” as the reason for this structural change, expressing excitement about Reform UK’s future prospects.
Under the proposed new Reform UK constitution, members will be able to remove Farage – or any other party leader – in a no-confidence vote.
A vote can be triggered if 50 per cent of all members write to the chairman requesting a motion of no confidence.
Reform MPs can also force a vote if 50 of them, or 50 per cent of them, write to the chairman requesting one. But this only applies if there are more than 100 Reform MPs in Parliament – a high bar.