What could come between Rupert Lowe and Ukip? Seagulls

After his very public split with Nigel Farage last week, the former Reform MP Rupert Lowe left open the possibility of joining what remains of Ukip, telling right wing commentator Dan Wootton he had not taken any decisions about his future.

Alas, while there is much Lowe has in common with one of Farage’s many former parties, now led by Nick Tenconi – not least a commitment to “mass deportation”, a policy so extreme as to make even Farage a touch queasy – there remains a big divide. Seagulls.

Lowe is fervently anti-gull, incensed by the large numbers in his Great Yarmouth constituency, a constituency map-lovers will note is on the coast. He wrote on Facebook earlier this month that “we need to do something about the seagulls plaguing the town,” has used one of his seemingly endless list of Commons questions to ask environment secretary Steve Reed to “make an assessment of the potential merits of removing the protected status of seagulls” and last week was promoting a local business survey that included the question: “Do seagulls negatively impact your business?”.

Tenconi, meanwhile, has thrown his party’s weight behind the great British seagull, after going full JD Vance at a rally in Portsmouth at the weekend where he claimed that migrants had been eating them. In a rant sparked by claims that migrants in the city had been eating koi carp from public ponds (sparked by a grainy video showing someone who may or may not have been a migrant holding what could have been frankly anything), Tenconi went on: “We have reports up and down the nation of people stealing, trapping and eating swans and seagulls. Third-worlders eat these.”

In terms of uniting the right, could the gull prove a gulf?

(Incidentally, at the same event, Tenconi claimed that, in the unlikely event that Ukip formed the next government, not only would there be mass migrations but anyone who opposed the policy would be sent to North Korea, adding, “how do you like those apples?”. It is not clear if Ukip has opened talks about this with the hermit kingdom yet.)