A former Conservative cabinet minister told me this week: “I think Reform will peak too early.” How prescient he seemed when, a few hours later, Rupert Lowe, one of the party’s five MPs, launched an attack on Nigel Farage, his leader – an attack that quickly escalated into Lowe being reported to the police and suspended from the party.
Other people saw the Reform implosion coming. Daniel Finkelstein, the Tory peer and columnist, wrote during the election campaign last year: “Nigel Farage should hope that he is the only Reform MP elected. Because if there are two or more of them, the Reform parliamentary party will split at some point during the next parliament. That is a firm prediction.”
