Farage: No Way Back for Lowe After Rape Gangs Claims

Nigel Farage has said there is “no way back” into Reform UK for Rupert Lowe after Mr Lowe made a series of accusations about the rape gangs scandal.

The Reform leader accused his former MP of wanting to “cause maximum destruction and damage” in retaliation for being suspended by Reform last week over allegations of bullying.

Mr Farage’s latest comments came after Mr Lowe – the MP for Great Yarmouth, who now sits as an independent – claimed that Reform had “silenced” him over Pakistani grooming gangs, in an extraordinary broadside on social media.

Mr Farage told The Telegraph: “Basically, what is happening here is Rupert Lowe knows there’s no way back. And he said to Lee Anderson, our whip and MP: ‘I will slit the throat of the Reform Party.’ He’s out to cause maximum destruction and damage.”

Reform suspended Mr Lowe on Friday and instructed an independent King’s Counsel lawyer (KC) to investigate what it said were serious allegations of bullying.

The party also reported Mr Lowe to the police over repeated threats he is alleged to have made against Zia Yusuf, the Reform chairman.

All of the accusations have been denied by Mr Lowe, who claims they are the result of criticisms he made of Mr Farage’s leadership of the party in an interview days earlier.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday, Mr Lowe said: “There have been repeated attempts from within Reform, including senior leadership, to silence me on the Pakistani rape gangs.

“At a speech in Essex, I was instructed by Farage’s team, sanctioned by him, to remove a call to deport all complicit foreign national family members. I ignored them.

“My repeated pleadings for Reform to follow up on its promise to deliver a national inquiry into the rape gangs were ignored. There was a belief from senior Reform figures that my language on the rape gangs was too strong, too robust, too tough.”

Mr Lowe accused Mr Farage and Reform of giving “false hope to millions” about the scandal, which returned to the news agenda after it was heavily publicised by Elon Musk, the tech billionaire who owns X.

In what has been described as the biggest child protection scandal in UK history, some 1,400 girls in Rotherham were groomed between 1997 and 2013. Most of the perpetrators were British Pakistanis.

Mr Farage has been campaigning on the issue for more than a decade and first mentioned it during a by-election in 2012.

He told The Telegraph: “Not content with now being under investigation by the Metropolitan Police, not content with the fact that the independent KC has already publicly rebuked him for not respecting due process and for openly lying about his conversation with the KC, [Mr Lowe] is now out to pretend that he’s the only person who wants to deal with the Pakistani rape gangs.

“My record on this goes back to 2013. I in fact did an exclusive with The Telegraph at the time in 2014 about a couple in Rotherham who had been taken off the foster list for being Ukip members at the same time as all these things were going on.”

Mr Farage continued: “I’ve campaigned strongly on this for years and it’s a completely false assertion. The idea you can deport whole communities who have British passports is just not possible under British law and never was.

“Furthermore, his speech in Essex that he talks about, what I stopped him from using was the word ‘repatriation’. I told him not to use the word ‘repatriation’ as well as ‘mass deportations’, because I thought it was a very grave, dark and dangerous use of language.

“This is all an attempt not just to damage Reform, but to get Elon Musk thinking that he’s the good guy.”

Responding to news that he would not be allowed back into the fold, Mr Lowe said: “Reform should not belong to Farage, it should belong to the members.

“Let them decide if I am welcome in the party. Hold a vote to see if they approve of this malicious witch hunt launched by Reform’s leadership.

“Farage claims Reform is a democratic party. I say prove it.”

Simmering tensions

Mr Farage’s remarks mark the end of the road for Mr Lowe in the party after months of simmering tensions between the two men.

In a further escalation on Wednesday afternoon, Mr Lowe accused Mr Anderson of a “pattern of bullying and aggressive behaviour” after the Reform chief whip clashed with a well-known protester in Westminster.

In a video of the confrontation shared on social media, Mr Anderson can be seen calling Steve Bray, an anti-Brexit campaigner, a “scrounger”, a “parasite” and a “drain on the public finances”.

As tempers rose, the Reform MP leaned over and tipped the campaigner’s hat, to which Mr Bray shouted “that’s assault” and pushed him back.

The pair then continued to trade insults, with Mr Anderson calling Mr Bray a “thug”, and the protester retaliating: “You’re a coward.”

Posting the clip on X, Mr Lowe said: “Following swearing at a parliamentary security guard, this is a pattern of bullying and aggressive behaviour from Anderson.

“I look forward to seeing how Reform deals with this concerning development.”

Mr Anderson was previously ordered to apologise after telling a parliamentary security guard to “f—- off” in November 2023.

Meanwhile, it is understood that the pair were barely on speaking terms in January when Mr Musk, who has publicly backed Reform, unexpectedly called on Mr Farage to step aside as party leader.

Mr Musk claimed the MP for Clacton “doesn’t have what it takes” and later that day made a tentative suggestion that Mr Lowe would be a suitable replacement.

Mr Lowe has outflanked Mr Farage to the Right on a number of issues including mass deportations, something his party leader says would not be as practical as some claim.

A day before his suspension, Mr Lowe was at the centre of a row with Mr Farage over comments he made in an interview with the Daily Mail.

Reform’s now-former business spokesman suggested his party leader might be unable to “deliver the goods”, accused him of acting like a “messiah” and suggested he was running the party as a “protest party”.

The spat threatens to derail the significant progress made by Reform since the general election.

The party is virtually tied with Labour at the top of the opinion polls, and is outperforming the Tories to present itself as the main challenger on the Right in British politics.