How Reform can survive its civil war

After a spectacular week of feuding, opinion polls appear to show support for Reform UK remains unscathed. Reform somehow still sits at level-pegging with Labour – perhaps even a point ahead – with the Tories several points further adrift.

Yet anyone who thinks that the fall-out between Rupert Lowe and Nigel Farage can be dismissed as a little local difficulty which is now safely consigned to the past is liable to be disappointed.

Reports reaching the party hierarchy of recent branch meetings say that many grassroots members are ‘raging’ at the treatment of Lowe and seething at the treatment of him by Farage and party chairman Zia Yusuf. Lowe does not seem to be bluffing in his claims to have put ‘teams’ of lawyers on the case. There is little confidence that the party’s various actions and allegations against him, unveiled just a day after publication of an interview in which he criticised Farage directly, will be able to withstand such unsparing scrutiny.

A bigger worry right now for the party is its impending mega-rally at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham, which can seat 15,000. The March 28 event was conceived as a high-energy, razmataz-filled launchpad for Reform’s local elections campaign, as well as being the biggest political rally Britain has seen for many years.

But there’s a shadow hanging over it. Put succinctly, it is the fear that if Yusuf takes to the stage to deliver a ra-ra speech, he will be roundly booed, generating fresh headlines about splits in the party. The young Reform chairman makes an ideal whipping boy for members sore at losing Lowe but not ready to press the nuclear button by turning on Farage himself.  ‘The message has been clear from the branches I have spoken to: if Zia speaks, he will be booed and heckled,’ says one well plugged-in Reform supporter.

Ironically, some Reform insiders are now hoping that the far left will ride to the rescue. The leftist MP Zarah Sultana, who has likened Reform to a reincarnation of the National Front, is calling for a major counter-protest at the Birmingham rally. It seems likely that large numbers of left-wing activists will attempt to restrict access to the NIA, getting up close and personal with Reform supporters as they arrive.

‘For our members, running the gauntlet of a load of hairy lefties and being reminded how much ideological animosity there is towards Reform from people they despise may well prove to be a healing and unifying moment,’ says one source.

The party’s poll ratings may yet dip this month as coverage of the splits that have been on show percolates down to ‘low information’ voters who tend not to follow politics closely but dislike public displays of division. But worries about an outright collapse in support ruining the party’s first big electoral test since last year’s general election have dissipated. Reform still expects to see scores, possibly hundreds, of councillors getting elected in its colours. It is also going to have a ‘proper crack’ at winning the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, which may well coincide with the local polls.

The key target here is to push the Tories into a distant third place and to run Labour close, so that Farage can argue that for voters on the right, it is now a case of ‘vote Tory, get Labour’. But outright victory would generate the kind of headlines party leaders dream about, as well as throwing up the prospect of a further series of spectacular by-election wins, as the SDP achieved in the early 1980s.

In that case, the twists and turns of a messy ongoing battle with Lowe could be more easily dismissed as an increasing irrelevance. ‘We are not broken. Our political brand has far more resilience than our critics allow for. We have lessons to learn for sure, but the public isn’t going to dump us just because the political establishment wants them to,’ says one key Reformer.

They have had the proverbial week of living dangerously, but the show is still on the road.