Reform: blowing it big time

Over on X I’ve seen a fair few resignations from the Reform Party. It’s fair to say that Reform is losing some of its most committed activists - and has completely lost the support of the right wing commentariat. There was already scepticism about the direction of the party even before the bust up with Rupert Lowe, but now the trickle has become a flood. I don’t think any party can withstand this level of anger from its own base.

Compounding the outrage is today’s candidate announcement for the Runcorn by-election. The party has selected a Tory magistrate whose record is less than stellar. It is such a liability that she’s even deleted her X account. She’s been outed as one of the “refugees welcome” brigade as well as having let off a drunk driver with a fine after crashing into a fence. At best this woman could be described as a Tory wet, but looks more like an actual Lib Dem.

This begs a great many questions of Refrom’s vetting process. From this we can deduce that there is either no vetting process at all, or worse… there is a vetting process and nobody saw any problem with her. It should also be noted that the local candidate was dumped to parachute her in.

It’s clear that the party is now recruiting any old Tory dross - and should it make a breakthrough, the party would be every bit as much a dysfunctional mess as the Tories in 2019, comprised of containment-right figures and Lib Dems.

It's starting to look like the attack on Rupert Lowe was the opening volley of a sustained campaign by the party to dump the entire party base. Perhaps the money men have decided that the party cannot win as a populist party so the party will become whatever it needs to be in order to serve the business interests of donors. Either that or they're just monumentally stupid. Even odds, I think.

This is not going well for Farage or Yusuf. The comments under their X posts are almost entirely critical. The situation, I think, is now terminal. Reform could win the Runcorn by-election by accident of numbers, but I have a hunch they won’t. Either way, though, it’s only downhill from here. I’d been told by Reform supporters that voting Reform is the only way to break the grip of the uniparty, but it seem Farage is hell bent on the party becoming the uniparty.

Between this, and what is set to be a long and bitter feud between Lowe and senior Reform figures, the party has destroyed any chance of making a big breakthrough at the next election. Short of a reboot, in which Reform co-owner, Zia Yusuf, is sacked, and the party firming up its position on immigration, it’s difficult to see how Reform claws back its base.

There’s an outside chance I’m completely wrong about this, and what happens on X largely stays on X. That is certainly Matt Goodwin’s view. But that is an odd position for a party to take when it owes its fortunes as much to social media as the return of Nigel Farage. The party has invested heavily in social media - and now Farage et al cannot appear anywhere on social media without a barrage of complaint.

As much as anything, Farage is not only out of touch with the party base, he has also miscalculated the pitch on immigration. If Douglas Carswell and Robert Jenrick are in any way reliable weather vanes, the centre-right is now moving towards muscular civic nationalism and remigration, leaving Reform’s woolly net zero immigration policy looking even more like an empty slogan.

What’s curious about all this is that Farage seems to forget that perhaps the biggest influx of members into Ukip came on the back of David Cameron deciding it was time to ditch the Tory right base, in favour of enviro-centrism, after which Cameron failed to win an outright majority. It rather suggests that if ever Farage was good at politics, he certainly isn’t anymore.

As to what happens now, it’s difficult to say. There are again mutterings of Rupert Lowe starting a new party. This doesn't accomplish anything. He may take the online activist base with him, and maybe 20% of Reform supporters, building up to 30% over time, but the only thing it will really do is ensure the civil war keeps burning all the way up to the next election. The Lowe Party would barely register in vote share, but its existence would do enough damage to Reform to prevent it recovering.

With financial backing, the Lowe party might gain some traction, but you wouldn't expect Reform to bow out. It would be a fight to the death, and the media would probably give the advantage to Reform to prevent a harder line party making ground. Oblivious boomers would continue to back Farage.

As it happens, I don't think it will happen. Lowe seems more likely to join the Tories and instigate a Jenrick-led coup to oust Badenough. That way we could end up with a Tory party to the right of Reform, and it would probably shoot Farage's fox for good. Whatever happens, though, this Torykip psychodrama should not distract us from building a real nationalist alternative. We have to step over all of the Brexit era wreckage.