H&D readers might have been forgiven for wondering why for years we have published sceptical and sometime hostile analysis of Nigel Farage and his political projects – UKIP, the Brexit Party, and now Reform UK.
Well – if you doubted us in the past, you can’t doubt us now.
Last night Reform UK collapsed into an entirely predictable seething mass of factional recrimination, as Farage suspended his most active and eloquent MP, Rupert Lowe.
Farage and his main ally, Reform UK chairman Zia Yusuf, have accused Lowe (who will now sit as an independent MP) of a range of lurid ‘offences’. In one case their main witness appears to be a Labour MP who had a brief confrontation with Lowe at Westminster.
It’s difficult instantly to assess the precise credibility of these charges, but many of them seem (at worst) to involve Lowe allegedly having a hot temper. The idea that this 67-year-old MP is such a physical threat to his colleagues that he has to be referred to police, seems utterly ludicrous.
Long-term observers of the civic nationalist scene have long ago realised that Farage is the civnat equivalent of Nick Griffin. He sees the party as his private property, and any credible potential rival has to be crushed and expelled. The allegations against Lowe are reminiscent of the paranoid allegations and wild rumours that Griffin frequently used against his critics.
And the outcome is that you end up with a leader surrounded by either sycophants or buffoons, chosen not because of what they can contribute to the cause, but because they are no conceivable threat to Farage’s position.
Rupert Lowe’s own response to having been purged from the party will bring back bitter memories for those of us who also had the experience of being stabbed in the back by our own party:
“I have been betrayed more times than I care to remember, but never by people I would have called friends. It’s not a very pleasant feeling, to be entirely honest.”
We shouldn’t be surprised, therefore, that more thoughtful civic nationalists such as Pete North have both evolved ideologically in the direction of racial nationalism, and shunned Farage politically because his party is a personality cult rather than a serious movement.
Mr North opted instead to join the Homeland Party. It’s very early days for Homeland, and H&D remains independent of all political parties, factions and movements. However, we would encourage all serious nationalists still in Reform’s ranks (whether civic, racial, or on some intermediate ideological path) to explore this and other political options, such as the British Democrats, who unlike Reform have a credible constitution.