Good morning. You may not know the names of Suzanne Evans, Ben Habib, Douglas Carswell, or Patrick O’Flynn – but Rupert Lowe definitely does. Lowe is the Reform UK MP who has fallen out in spectacular fashion with Nigel Farage, and is now waging an online campaign against the leader who he says thinks of himself as “the Messiah”. Evans, Habib, Carswell and O’Flynn were all once prominent allies of Farage – and their fate does not suggest that this story will end with Lowe and Farage having an ice-cream together.
But if the arc of Lowe’s case is familiar, it is unfolding in a very different context. This time, the fight is between two MPs in a party that claims to have designs on forming the next government, and recognises that it must professionalise rapidly if it is to have any hope of doing so. The trouble is, both sides say that the other one is the roadblock to that process – and in the past, any fight between Farage’s ego and the view of the rank and file has only had one winner.
