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One of Nigel Farage’s most prominent MPs has questioned his “messianic” leadership and called for his leader to delegate more and make a “proper plan”.
Rupert Lowe, the MP for Great Yarmouth, who was touted as a replacement leader by Elon Musk earlier this year, also said he did not know whether Farage would be a good prime minister.
Asked by the Daily Mail about Farage’s leadership and potential to enter No 10, Lowe said: “It’s too early to know whether Nigel will deliver the goods. He can only deliver if he surrounds himself with the right people.
“Nigel is a fiercely independent individual and is extremely good at what we have done so far. He has got messianic qualities. Will those messianic qualities distill into sage leadership? I don’t know.”
Lowe also suggested he could leave the Reform party if it does not change before the next election by structuring itself with less dependence on Farage.
“We have to change from being a protest party led by the Messiah into being a properly structured party with a frontbench, which we don’t have. We have to start behaving as if we are leading and not merely protesting.
“Nigel is a messianic figure who is at the core of everything, but he has to learn to delegate, as not everything can go through one person.
“So we have to start developing policy which is going to change the way we govern. I’m not going to be by Nigel’s side at the next election unless we have a proper plan to change the way we govern from top to bottom. We can’t raise the hopes of people who are so frustrated with the way we are governed and then flunk it.”
In the interview, he also suggested MPs should be paid about £250,000 but that the chamber should be halved in number, and referred to the BBC as a “cancer at the heart of Britain”.
A businessman and former chair of Southampton FC, Lowe said of himself: “I sit in parliament with my experience in farming, various risk-taking businesses, and so I speak with a plain tongue … I am a bit like the one-eyed man in the land of the blind. But, funnily enough, the one-eyed man is usually in charge in the end in the land of the blind.”
Lowe’s intervention comes after internal Reform speculation about tensions with Farage, especially after Musk’s intervention.
The world’s richest man had hinted at a possible £100m donation to Reform but later said Farage “doesn’t have what it takes” after a spat over the party’s decision to distance itself from the far right leader Tommy Robinson. At the time, Musk said: “I have not met Rupert Lowe but his statements online that I have read make a lot of sense.”
Lowe has been more favourable towards Robinson and has a substantial grassroots following among Reform members, as well as very high levels of engagement on social media. He appeared to be the only one out of Farage’s five MPs not to be at the party’s fundraising event
Asked previously about Robinson, who is in prison for defying orders not to repeat defamatory statements about a victim of an assault, Lowe said: “I say he’s not right for Reform, he doesn’t want to be right for Reform, but he doesn’t deserve not to be given the credit for the things that he’s done.”
He has also defended the US president Donald Trump’s approach to getting a “sensible peace deal” in Ukraine.
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said there was “internecine warfare at the top of Reform”, claiming that “their MPs are more concerned with their own egos, and advancing their personal ambitions, rather than standing up for the British people”.
“With one of Farage’s most senior MPs doubting his leadership abilities and admitting that Reform is a protest party with no plan, it is clear that Reform are not serious, and will always put self-interest above our national interest,” said Philp.
“The British public deserve solutions, not just empty slogans. Only the Conservatives, under Kemi Badenoch’s leadership, can be trusted to be a real opposition, and real alternative, to this dreadful Labour government.”
