Habib and Lowe have blown it - Reform under Nigel Farage is about to win big

Time and again political rookies who get a bit of media attention start to believe they are far more important than they really are.

Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash

WHAT DO the likes of Ben Habib and Rupert Lowe think they are achieving? If their desire is to create a more ideologically pure version of Reform that can take on the establishment on issues such as mass deportations then they are barking up the wrong tree.

Habib’s plan for a new party, “Integrity”, unveiled last week, will join all the other right-wing micro-parties that have failed to gain any electoral traction whatsoever. I’d give it 18 months tops and predict it will never get anyone elected. One cannot help but suspect Habib became addicted to showing-off his undoubtedly impressive intellect on the likes of GB News, on which he built a small cult following. Being removed as a deputy leader after failing to win a seat in the Commons clearly bruised his ego too, but it was a perfectly logical outcome that his fellow deputy leader at the time, David Bull, took with good grace.

Lowe has if anything handled his position even worse. Elon Musk’s praise and numbers of “likes on X” clearly convinced him that he could do a better job as party leader than could Nigel Farage. In fact, I was a fan of his hard-as-nails messaging on immigration policy and law and order. But for him to be waging a legal war against his party and its leader in the week of the local elections is utterly crackers. When pressed about his frustration about Reform’s tardiness in committing to ultra-tough immigration policy his response should have been something like: “I accept that I am something of a radical on this stuff, even in Reform terms. But I know all my parliamentary colleagues have campaigned hard on it too and I am very confident by the time we launch our election manifesto in three or four years, we will be offering a set of policies that can save Britain and restore full national border control.”

Even in the past couple of weeks, Farage has unleashed much tougher soundbites on immigration, dubbing himself the “deporter in chief”. Habib, Lowe and their online fan club want to commit to blood-curdling stuff now but in political terms they are both novices. Farage knows when to bring the pot to the boil.

So what impact will Habib and Lowe have on Reform’s performance on Thursday? Let