There were plenty of empty seats at Reform’s big rally at Birmingham’s NEC last Friday, many as a result of Nigel Farage’s feud with suspended MP Rupert Lowe, who is worshipped by the party’s more extreme supporters (so, most of them then). Though no official figures were released, it seems clear that boasts of staging “the biggest rally in modern political history” fell well short – attendance was a few thousand below the 10,000 audience for Neil Kinnock’s ill-fated Sheffield Rally in 1992.
The Lowe/Farage schism is so threatening that Belinda de Lucy, like both men a former Brexit Party MEP, has issued an extraordinary brown-nosing defence of Farage. “I do not recognise the accusations thrown at him,” she wrote. “This bitter concerted campaign against him personally from some on the right is unwarranted – and puts our only chance of a political revolution at risk…
“A man of such heart almost never comes to politics. It’s a once-in-an-epoch event. I and many others treasure him… Men like Nigel are rare, and so they are rarely understood. But when we are blessed to have them, we must defend them.” All hail the blessed Nigel, and best of luck in this battle of two complete cults!
