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The fierce clash at the top of Reform UK has escalated with Nigel Farage and Rupert Lowe launching fresh attacks against each other and the party denying its suspension of Lowe was politically motivated.
Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy chair, was dispatched to the Sunday media studios to try to calm the row that has engulfed the party less than two months before a pivotal set of local elections.
Tice said there was no connection between Lowe’s suspension from Reform on Friday and his criticism of Farage the day before. Asked whether he expected people to believe one had not led to the other, Tice said: “I think people will believe that because there is absolutely no truth in that suggestion.”
He told BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme: “The sad reality is Rupert has been doing some great work but there have been too many instances where actually we’ve seen a different character.” On Sky News, Tice said the party’s suspension of Lowe was “not at all” Putinesque.
Lowe was stripped of the Reform whip on Friday afternoon after the party issued an extraordinary statement making a string of allegations against him.
The statement said Lowe faced bullying allegations from two women who had worked for him, with complaints made to parliamentary authorities, and that he had separately threatened Reform’s chair, Zia Yusuf, with violence, which had been reported to the police. The party said it had appointed an independent KC to investigate the bullying claims. Lowe has denied the allegations.
It came the day after Lowe had given an interview to the Daily Mail where he complained that under Farage, Reform remained a “protest party led by the Messiah”. He also said it was “too early to know whether Nigel will deliver the goods” and become prime minister.
In competing articles for the Sunday Telegraph, Lowe and Farage launched fresh broadsides. Lowe vehemently denied the allegations against him, describing them as a “witch-hunt” and saying there was a “complete inability for the Reform leadership to even accept the most mild constructive criticism”.
Lowe said he had been “entirely frozen out” of the Reform party machinery for months in a “deliberate and calculated way” and that his suspension had been “a cowardly act that undermines our entire cause”.
In his article, Farage accused Lowe of “unloading a barrage of criticisms against our operations and its main actors” and having “managed to fall out with all his parliamentary colleagues in one way or another” through a series of “outbursts”.
Farage suggested Lowe could not control his temper, citing his row with the transport minister Mike Kane after a debate in the Commons chamber in December where the serjeant-at-arms had to intervene. Farage quoted Kane telling GB News “the anger displayed towards me clearly showed a man not in charge of his own faculties”.
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Farage implied that Reform had decided to investigate the bullying complaints against Lowe before he criticised his leadership and that this might have prompted his outburst.
Tice told broadcasters there was an “unfortunate trend” in Lowe’s behaviour and that the decision to suspend him demonstrated that the party was acting professionally. “The anxieties that we had had over Rupert’s behaviour, regrettably that had been going on for some time just before the Christmas parliamentary break,” he said.
Lowe issued a statement to the BBC in response to Tice’s interview, saying it was “so disappointing to hear these falsehoods from a friend”. “If these allegations were so serious, why only remove me from the party the day after I raised reasonable concerns around Reform’s leadership?”
Chris Philp, the Conservative shadow home secretary, said: “We’ve seen Rupert Lowe last week say out loud what we all know: that Reform is essentially a protest party with no seriously thought-out policies led by, as Rupert Lowe said, a messianic leader. And how do they respond to that? They respond by essentially smearing him straight afterwards.”
