Given the widespread anti-woke backlash that it has spawned, it’s not clear whether Nigel Farage has watched Christopher Nolan’s interpretation of The Odyssey – but if he has, he may wish to bear one of its core lessons in mind: beware of Greeks bearing gifts.
Nolan’s movie devotes much of its screen time to the fall of Troy, brought down from within after accepting a gift, in the form of a wooden horse, from a long-time adversary. On Sunday, Rupert Lowe – the MP who founded Restore Britain after being expelled acrimoniously from Farage’s Reform UK – appeared to offer Farage a similarly generous gift.
In a 12-minute video message posted to X, Lowe suggested it was time for the two parties “to put personalities and our past disagreements aside for the good of the country” and find some way of working together – perhaps through some form of alliance, or a pact not to stand in the same seats at a future election.
The Greater Manchester mayoral contest showed the danger Restore could pose to Reform in the absence of such a deal: Reform took around 21 per cent of first-preference votes in that contest, while Restore took just under 10 per cent.
Because that race uses a form of proportional representation, Reform could pick up Restore’s vote as second preferences. But in a first-past-the-post general election, splitting the vote in this way could cost Reform seats across the country – and jeopardise Nigel Farage’s prospects of ever becoming prime minister.
Lowe’s offer, then, is both too tempting and too important to ignore entirely. But, unsurprisingly, it comes with a list of conditions – five of them, to be precise, almost all of which would require Farage and Reform to sign up to Restore’s more radically right-wing agenda in full.
First, Reform would have to support large-scale mass deportations of both legal and illegal migrants. “Millions must go,” Lowe warned, including “women and children”. Next, Farage would have to agree to reverse what Lowe called “the Islamification of Britain”, adopting a range of policies including banning the burka, alongside both halal and Kosher slaughter.
Lowe also demanded a referendum on reinstating the death penalty, a commitment to making “enormous cuts” to public spending, and finally insisted that any former Conservative Cabinet ministers who have since jumped ship to Reform – such as Robert Jenrick, Suella Braverman, Nadhim Zahawi or Nadine Dorries – could never serve in a future cabinet.
Farage is a savvy enough politician to spot that this is not so much a gift as a trap, from a man whom he personally detests. Farage and Lowe disagree violently on why Lowe was expelled from Reform. Lowe insists it was over his support for mass deportations, which Farage at that time was unwilling to endorse (the party adopted the policy later); Farage, meanwhile, insists it was over disciplinary violations around the treatment of Reform’s politicians and staff (Lowe denies any accusations of wrongdoing).
By offering the olive branch, Lowe has positioned himself as the bigger man, the peacemaker willing to put their differences aside in order to fulfil their shared political goals. In doing so on X, he has done this in full view of both parties’ most fanatical online supporters – and the site’s owner, Elon Musk, who has repeatedly endorsed Lowe’s policies after cooling on Farage. And by going first, Lowe has essentially demanded that Farage embrace Restore’s political agenda, which is even more radical than Reform’s.
This leaves Farage in something of a no-win situation. Even if he wanted to work with Lowe and went along with his list of demands, this would create new political problems for him. Reform’s voting coalition includes people who aren’t fully signed up to the idea of mass deportations and full-blown Islamophobia, but who are simply fed up of the status quo and the mainstream parties.
Embracing Lowe’s policies could mean scaring off one set of his voters so as not to lose the other – the exact dilemma in which Farage landed the Conservative Party, before he started to poach its voters and its MPs alike. Indeed, Lowe has done to Farage what Farage did to the Tories: outflanked him from the right and left him with almost no good options.
More immediately, if Farage promised not to promote any of his Conservative defectors, they would likely turn on him while he was already vulnerable due to ongoing scandals. Farage will surely try to ignore or dismiss the deal, but might find his most vocal online supporters unhappy with that situation.
For all his talk of supposed unity and reconciliation, Lowe must know he has thrown a grenade into his old adversary’s foxhole, and he will surely be looking forward to watching the fallout.
Still, before those on the left celebrate the discord on the right too much, they may wish to reflect on this: for the first time in his decades in British politics, Nigel Farage is facing a major threat from his right flank. The resulting contest could drag British politics in that direction, too. Beware of those bearing gifts, indeed.
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