The Farage and Lowe drama that’s consuming the British right

LONDON — Two of Britain’s leading right-wing politicians are stuck in a will-they-won’t-they tussle — and it could have big implications for the next general election. Nigel Farage and Rupert Lowe have spent the week flirting with, retreating from … and then once again talking up a rapprochement between their two parties, Farage’s Reform UK and Lowe’s Restore Britain. It comes after months of bitter briefing against Farage by Lowe, whose hard-right party — while still polling in single digits — has eaten into support for Farage’s much larger right-wing force. POLITICO recaps the saga — and tries to map out what it could mean for the wider British right. Who are the key players? Farage has been a dominant figure in British politics for many years. He was originally leader of the Euroskeptic UKIP, then the Brexit Party, and now Reform UK after a comeback at the 2024 general election. That election delivered five Reform MPs, including Farage … and Rupert Lowe himself. Best known to some for a tumultuous stint as chair of Southampton Football Club, the multimillionaire Lowe briefly joined Farage in the European Parliament in 2019 as a Brexit Party MEP. He unsuccessfully stood for Reform in a 2024 by-election, but the pair were reunited after the general election when Lowe won the coastal seat of Great Yarmouth. Why did they fall out? It’s complicated. On the surface, it’s a policy split, but there’s plenty of personal bad blood too. Farage has always taken a hardline approach to immigration — but some of Lowe’s stated positions went too far even for him. The Great Yarmouth MP publicly backed the deportation of families of people convicted of child grooming, a move the Reform UK leader rejected. Lowe said he had been “silenced” by the party. Then Elon Musk weighed in. In January last year, the tech tycoon used his platform to lay into Farage, saying he was no longer the right person for the job — and giving his backing to Lowe. Lowe is a hit on the Musk-owned social platform X, where his lengthy posts have topped up his earnings. After publicly criticizing Farage’s management of Reform, Lowe lost the Reform UK whip in March 2025. In a significant escalation, he was reported to the police over alleged threats of physical violence against Reform chairman Zia Yusuf — though no further action was taken by the authorities. The pair’s mutual loathing only seemed to escalate. Lowe sat as an independent MP in the House of Commons, before setting up Restore Britain as a cross-party group, publishing policy papers on mass deportations and holding its own inquiry into the emotive issue of grooming gangs. It became a full-blown party this February, capitalizing on the Great Yarmouth MP’s growing X following. What’s that meant for Farage? The Reform UK leader, who has a well-established history of falling out with one-time allies, initially kept his distance from Lowe, claiming the hard-right party’s following is minimal. However, Lowe’s movement has already proven effective at splitting the already fragmented right-wing vote. The Great Yarmouth First party, an affiliate of Restore, picked up nine seats at May’s local elections and denied Reform a majority on Norfolk County Council, although Reform still made huge gains nationally. At the Makerfield by-election, which Labour’s Andy Burnham won shortly before becoming British prime minister, Restore Britain bagged 6.8 percent to Reform’s 34.5 percent. Even though their combined totals wouldn’t have beaten Burnham, Farage lambasted the result, asking Restore voters: “What do you want?” A similar pattern emerged at last week’s Greater Manchester mayoral by-election to succeed Burnham, where Restore picked up 8.7 percent of first preference votes. What’s the latest on a rapprochement? After the Greater Manchester contest, Lowe shot a 12-minute X video calling for the two men