Like an extended voice note from a friend you fell out with but can’t remember why, Rupert Lowe posted a 12-minute-long video on X asking Nigel Farage to be pals again.
The Restore Britain leader’s brand of ethno-nationalism-dressed-as-country-squire has eaten into Reform UK’s support recently. That it is happening just as Reform has dipped behind Labour in some polls means Lowe spies an opportunity.
Last week Restore won almost 9 per cent of first-preference votes in the Greater Manchester mayoral by-election, ahead of the Conservatives. Lowe’s time is now.
Lowe used to be a Reform MP until an almighty bust up with Farage saw him splinter off to form a far-right alternative. The wounds haven’t yet healed. So how would Farage react to the olive branch in which Lowe set out a series of conditions for an alliance including mass deportation of illegal migrants including women and children, a ban on halal and kosher slaughter, the burqa, cousin marriage and sharia courts?
For two men who fell out so spectacularly and have spent the last year trading insults in public and private, (Lowe called Farage a “narcissist,” Farage described Lowe as “one angry man saying stuff on the internet”), the Reform leader was surprisingly emollient when asked about Lowe’s overture at a news conference on Monday morning.
“I would do whatever I could for us to have a sane centre right alliance that beat Labour at the next general election,” Farage said at a news conference. Given Lowe’s shopping list includes a referendum on the death penalty, it wasn’t made entirely clear where Farage draws his line.
And just minutes later Lowe reminded everyone the two men don’t trust each other by accusing Farage of lying and potentially scuppering talks about a concordat before they had got going. Rather than calling direct as he claimed, Farage messaged Lowe at 10:30pm on Sunday night to say: “Will call later,” according to Lowe.
“The offer remains open to Nigel and Reform. Although outright lying about our private conversations does not help that,” Lowe added. Awkward doesn’t even come close.
One of Lowe’s stipulations was a demand that ex-Tory ministers such as Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman be excluded from any Reform-Restore cabinet. But having absorbed so much schtick from Reform’s purists that the party gangplank should be pulled up to stop more Tories boarding, Farage is unlikely to throw this lot overboard.
Farage said something even more interesting when he was asked about a deal with the Conservatives. “I’m open-minded about talks with people who I think share a similar, albeit in some cases slightly different, objective,” he said, although he added he did not trust the Tories’ record on immigration.
It’s significant because it means Reform strategists are taking the party’s dip in the polls seriously, having previously coasted on the assumption they might secure an outright majority.
But by opening the possibility of talks with the Tories, Farage is undermining the structural underpinning of his whole project. How can someone whose entire proposition for the past few years that they’re not the Conservative Party be open to talks about compacts with the very people he’s been trying to destroy?
The moment a merger is even contemplated, Farage loses his appeal as the Viking prepared to sack and burn down all before him. Not only does he forfeit it with his core support, the former Reform zealots don’t come back: those who peeled off to Lowe because they no longer see Farage as the chief marauding invader.
Some grassroots Reform members see joining Farage’s gang as a purification ritual from the Tories, which is why they find it so galling when Braverman’s record on migration is brought up. Small boat crossings hit a record high in 2022, during her tenure as Home Secretary. She argues the numbers were out of control before she took office.
Meanwhile Tory Leader Kemi Badenoch is asked ad nauseam whether she will consider a covenant with Farage. For now, as the Tory brand lags her personal poll ratings, she has the authority to bat off suggestions of a deal. Her purge of the One Nation former Tory MPs – what Mrs Thatcher would have called the wets – from standing again shows she’s serious about taking Reform on its home turf.
But there are plenty in her party, including some in her Shadow Cabinet, who privately accept some sort of accommodation will have to be found if the polls don’t get substantially better in the run up to 2029.
Equally there are some Tories who blanch at the idea of a national alliance, fearing individual wipe-out.
“There is no way we want a pre-election pact, what would that look like? My standing aside if they’re doing better in the polls? No thank you,” a Conservative MP under threat from Reform in the east of England told The i Paper. But the Tory did not rule out a governing coalition in the event of a hung Parliament. “Perhaps afterwards when we see where the land lies,” the MP added.
It’s very early days to start talking about accords between Reform and the Tories or Reform and Restore. Badenoch doing a deal with a coalition that included Restore seems hard to believe. How Farage and Lowe get over their obvious differences is another imponderable.
Asked if he had any red lines for a pact with Lowe, Farage said he was open-minded to a “conversation” with the Restore Britain leader, but isn’t at a point of doing any negotiating. That’s a long, long way from any sort of deal. And that’s before any egos get involved.
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