For all their claims to be mould-breaking politicians, the feuding Nigel Farage and Rupert Lowe are in many ways predictable and traditional rightwingers. Two wealthy white men in their 60s from southern England, with private educations and previous careers in the City, they were once members of the Conservative party – before, like many in their demographic, they decided it was not anti-EU enough. Out of this mix of dissatisfaction and privilege emerged the nationalistic, socially conservative politics that has dominated much of the past decade, shaping British discourse and influencing Labour and the Tories, despite the ever clearer failure of its flagship policy, Brexit.
Some of the intensity of the civil war on the right, which has erupted since Lowe left Reform UK in disputed circumstances last year and then set up his own populist party, Restore Britain, in February, is down to the smallness of the differences between the two leaders and their parties. Farage and Lowe are both aggressive, digitally enabled communicators who sometimes dress like old-fashioned country squires – signalling that they want to both disrupt and preserve – and draw from the same pool of activists, strategists and policy ideas.
