As the most entertaining civil war in history continues raging within Reform, it turns out that party leader Nigel Farage and chairman Zia Yusuf are not the only ones keen on reporting former colleagues to the police.
Farage has now joined Rupert Lowe, the MP stripped of the Reform whip after questioning his “messianic” supremo’s omniscience, as the subject of a complaint. Catherine Blaiklock, founder and (briefly) first leader of the Brexit Party says she has contacted police to share various allegations of fraud, harassment and bullying against him and others.
“I have today presented the Metropolitan Police with 29 documents relating to the Brexit Party and Mr Nigel Farage,” she told Dan Wootton’s Outspoken YouTube channel, adding that she thought Farage should never be prime minister.
Blaiklock is running against Reform in the forthcoming Runcorn and Helsby by-election, standing for the English Democrats, an eccentric outfit which calls for Monmouthshire to be returned from Wales. But will she still be carrying her favourite prop? In previous campaigns, Blaiklock has carried a large framed photograph of her black husband with her to prove she wasn’t racist.
Meanwhile, the indignities continue for Lowe, who has angrily accused Reform of briefing journalists that he has dementia, and who last week had his guns taken away from him by police.
Gloucestershire cops last week seized Lowe’s collection of weapons from the farm he lives on in the Cotswolds, approximately 230 miles from his constituency of Great Yarmouth. It follows allegations of harassing two women, which he denies, and his being reported to the police earlier this year over allegations of making verbal threats towards Yusuf.
“I am 67 years old, and I have a 67-year-long unblemished record with the law,” Lowe told the Daily Express in his defence. “These are false allegations, designed to maliciously smear my name and ruin my reputation after I dared to bruise Farage’s ego.”
A Reform spokesman, meanwhile, said: “Mr Lowe is being investigated by the police for making multiple threats to kill our chairman. The first was in December, the second in February. Unlike Mr Lowe, we respect their investigation and will let them do their work without lashing out and making false claims in public.”
It’s all going very well, isn’t it?
Wootton, meanwhile, was on the defensive in his interview with Blaiklock, lest he upset any Reform supporters in breaking this huge story.
“Before any of my Reform-supporting viewers suggest I should not be covering this story just a month out from critical local elections where Farage could make game-changing gains – I’m sorry,” he said. “I am an independent journalist, not a propagandist.” Of course you are, Danny Boy!
