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Reform Civil War Escalates as Ben Habib Opens Door to Forming New Party With Rupert Lowe

by Will Jones
10 March 2025 7:33 PM

The Reform civil war has further escalated after Ben Habib, who was ousted as Deputy Leader by Nigel Farage after the election, is considering joining forces with suspended MP Rupert Lowe to form a new party in a challenge to Farage. The Telegraph has the story.

Ben Habib, the former Brexit party MEP, served as co-Deputy Leader for Reform until after the General Election, when Mr Farage replaced him with Richard Tice.

Mr Habib, who ran for Reform in the Wellingborough and Rushden by-election last year, then quit the party citing concerns about “control of the party and the decision-making processes”.

The politician has been an outspoken supporter of Mr Lowe, who was suspended by the party on Friday after being accused of bullying and making threats.

Mr Habib said that the Great Yarmouth MP is a “good friend” and he is “constantly in touch with” him, adding that the pair “are both in politics for the same reason”.

Asked if he would consider a return to front-line politics if Mr Lowe were to split from the party, he told the Telegraph: “Ultimately the reason I joined Reform and the reason I stood for Reform in Wellingborough is because the only way you can make a difference is electorally.”

He added: “You’ve got to be at the ballot box and hold the electoral system to account… so the answer is yes, I think.”

The comments signal that Mr Lowe and Mr Habib could form a splinter group on the Right to challenge Mr Farage and Reform.

Mr Lowe, a successful businessman, told the Daily Mail a day before his suspension that Mr Farage was acting like a “messiah” and criticised his ability to delegate.

On Friday, Reform announced it had reported Mr Lowe to the police over allegations that he made threats of physical violence against Zia Yusuf, its Chairman.

In a statement, it said Mr Lowe had also been accused of bullying two female members of staff. Mr Lowe has categorically denied the claims, which he described as a “witch hunt”.

The party is now conducting an independent inquiry into the allegations, having appointed a KC to investigate.

Mr Farage wrote in the Telegraph at the weekend that he had been “surprised and saddened” by behaviour exhibited by his colleague. …

Mr Lowe hit back and claimed that Reform had tried to silence him over his “outspoken” views on migration, and had been “warned” by party leadership.

He also claimed that the KC appointed to the investigation said there was “zero evidence” against him, but the lawyer involved denied making such comments to the BBC on Monday.

The Great Yarmouth MP has also claimed that the bullying complaints for which he was thrown out of the party were not about him.

Andrew Bridgen, a former Tory MP, said on X that one of the members of staff used to work in his parliamentary office.

He wrote on Monday: “The plot thickens. One of my former parliamentary aides went on to work for Rupert Lowe: she is one of the staff involved in these allegations against him.

“She has told me that her original complaint had nothing to do with Rupert personally and was related to the actions of another member of his staff. I have her permission to post this tweet.”

Lee Anderson, the Reform party whip, said in response: “The written complaints include allegations about the conduct of Mr Lowe. I ask that Mr Lowe respects the independence of the investigation and refrains from making further false public statements.”

Worth reading in full.

On Substack, Patrick O’Flynn says the rift is not just personal but reflects a growing divide between the Right of the party and the leadership on the issue of immigration and mass deportations:

The rift with Lowe is partly down to ideological differences over the totemic issue of immigration. Lowe is the uncompromising voice of the party’s Right-wing, demanding the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants. He also wants many recent legal arrivals to have indefinite leave to remain withheld so they can be ushered out of the door too when their visas expire. These robust opinions have connected with huge numbers of online Right-leaning folk.

Farage, by contrast, has softened his rhetoric on immigration-related issues over recent months, saying that if Reform takes on the whole of Islam it will lose and that largescale repatriations are not achievable. Farage and his inner-circle have ironically embarked upon a ‘Vote Leave’ strategy, named after the more centrist official Brexit campaign that he bitterly opposed at the time.

Tags: Ben HabibNigel FarageReform UKRupert Lowe

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68 Comments
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wokeman
wokeman
1 year ago

Lucky the public sector is amazingly productive and these pensions are so well earned.

129
-3
EppingBlogger
EppingBlogger
1 year ago
Reply to  wokeman

I was thinking it is good they retire so soon in order to limit their damage.

30
-2
stewart
stewart
1 year ago
Reply to  EppingBlogger

Then the only damage they do is financial…

30
-1
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago

Public sector pensions are no different to state pensions in that they have always been unfunded. Successive governments have continued to kick this can down the road hence the mess we are now in. It is inconceivable that the Prime Ministers of the last twenty odd years or so have not been aware of this looming disaster so the question is why go so public on this now? It’s enough to make a conspiracy realist believe that the grand sale of UK PLC is not far off and we are simply being prepared for it.

97
-4
AJPotts
AJPotts
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Yes, all forms of state pension are Ponzi schemes.

Theywere bad enough when the working age population greatly exceeded the retired population but with baby boomers now retired there are nowhere near enough earners to fund state pensions. The triple lock was a disgusting and cynical electoral ruse but any politician principled enough to abolish it will suffer the electoral wrath of the baby boomers.

40
-36
Lurker
Lurker
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

I’m sure all politicians have been aware but continued to kick the can because it suited all sides.

I’d suggest 2 things have/are changing though,

1. It’s becoming harder to kick the can. In some areas more than 20% of council tax goes on pensions and it’s only going to get worse.

2. We’re facing a change in government so why not draw attention to it to force them to deal with it (and take the political hit) rather than allow the status quo to continue

47
-1
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Actually, I forgot to state the obvious – no Prime Minister and certainly not MP’s are going to push for the reigning in of State pensions when for most of them it’s the reason they sought election in the first place 😀

46
0
nige.oldfart
nige.oldfart
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Exactly, Politicians do things to promote themselves and to stay elected regardless of cost. Comfortable in the knowledge in that what they started will be paid for by someone else, and that someone else will carry the can for their decisions. Consider for a moment, the source of most of the problems of today, and the origins.

11
0
AJPotts
AJPotts
1 year ago

The scale of public sector pension liabilities is another illustration of the importance of economic growth. Annual average economic growth in excess of 2% is essential and eminently achievable if the right policies are adopted.

Liz Truss grasped this but lacked the political skills to implement a pro-growth agenda. Her successor pursues anti-growth policies as did her predecessors back to Blair.

The size and scope of the state need to be reduced radically with cuts in state spending, taxation, and regulation. Cheap and reliable energy is also essential along with incentives to save and invest rather than borrow and spend.

124
-3
GroundhogDayAgain
GroundhogDayAgain
1 year ago
Reply to  AJPotts

The state is far too large, far too powerful and headcount must be cut (either figuratively, or literally – I’m open to persuasion). Let these parasites find a real job in the real world where people (mostly) progress by competence rather than long-service.

Also, growth isn’t simply a case of ramping up GDP as most of our so-called leaders appear to believe. If GDP per-capita is falling (as it is currently) then we have a mirage.

Fixing the latter is far harder than pretending to fix the former, especially when inflation is eroding the value of money.

60
-1
Marcus Aurelius knew
Marcus Aurelius knew
1 year ago

“Our” public services.

LOL

56
0
NeilofWatford
NeilofWatford
1 year ago

The country is divided into two: the private sector, mostly small businesses who pay the taxes; and the public sector administrative state that lives off it. They dictate the rules that maintain their supremacy over the entrepreneurs,and will never willingly yield this power.
The private sector now works up to half a year to pay for it. Time for change.

101
-2
GroundhogDayAgain
GroundhogDayAgain
1 year ago
Reply to  NeilofWatford

The blob is parasitic and ‘progressively’ killing the host. There is no symbiosis.

66
0
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
1 year ago

No doubt that this is a preliminary to discussion of assisted dying, completely voluntary of course. Has its appeal but I would avoid it given the ghouls that we have in charge. I heard an estimate that human productivity globally is less than one percent of what it could be if we didn’t have the parasite on our back. There would easily be enough abundance to care for the old in their dotage. Tha parasite sucks more and more and gets you used to it gradually so that they normalize the unthinkable and make you forget that you ever thought otherwise.

44
-1
stewart
stewart
1 year ago
Reply to  Jabby Mcstiff

There would easily be enough abundance to care for the old in their dotage.

Ideally they don’t need to be cared for because they’ve set enough aside to take care of themselves.

16
-1
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
1 year ago
Reply to  stewart

Yes that would be far better. But the reality is very different. I read something recently that said that the average Brit doesn’t even have a few hundred pounds put away for a low level emergency like buying a new washing machine for example.

29
0
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
1 year ago

The Labour Party is campaigning on the basis of it ‘has a plan to get your future back’. They don’t have a plan and even if they did it would be doomed to fail. This time that we are moving into has nothing to do with getting your future back, quite the contrary. It will be a time when you will have no familiar foundations, no retrospective glories to appeal to. Essentially as new and alien as stepping onto another planet. In terms of politics you will already see that. The important thing is that the people see that there is no restoration or renewal of the old. What comes next hasn’t been forged yet but it has nothing to do with those power structures. They know that they are dying and so they engage in last gasps attempts. Where we go from here is going to look entirely different to anything that went before.

23
0
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
1 year ago

We talk about how difficult it is to financialize care work. Perhaps we shouldn’t be financializing. Like the editor of the FT said, financialisation is like a species of parasitic wasp which lays its eggs in the body of a host and then takes it over and destroys it. Anyone with any nous can see the doleful future that awaits if financialization isn’t recognised. I don’t even like saying it because it behoves a people to understand it.

10
0
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
1 year ago

There is a real battle up ahead and I don’t know if this is a conscious avoidance mechanism or genuine naivete. Just be are of the situation.

16
0
MTF
MTF
1 year ago

There is a lot of confusion here. Describing the pension liability as a “bill” is incredibly misleading. The best way of thinking of it is how much the government would have to pay a bank to take responsibility for meeting pension commitments under current arrangements. These commitments stretch many decades into the future so it is not as though the government has to pay them now or even in the short term. Comparing it to GDP is comparing capital liability with a single year’s income. It is dramatic but fundamentally irrelevant.

  • These commitments could in theory be met in many ways – e.g. increased tax, increased borrowing or increased pension contributions from public sector employees (at the moment NHS employees contribute more to the NHS pension than is being paid out – the treasury pockets the difference). About a quarter of the public sector pension liability is funded i.e. there are investments of various kinds which can be expected to meet 25% of the commitment. However, given the size of the payouts it seems likely that future governments will find ways of essentially reneging on the commitments e.g raising pension age, means testing pensions, increasing income tax on pensions.

It is also worth noting:

  • The size of liability depends enormously on the discount rate used (future payments have less current value than their value when paid e.g. the money can be invested until needed). Apparently the treasury is likely to reduce the liability by £1 trillion simply by changing the discount rate next year. The surge in pension liabilities over the last three years was almost entirely due to reducing the discount rate.
  • The liability arising from the state retirement pension, which most of us will get, is four times the liability from public sector pensions

I should add:

I have never worked for the public sector and therefore my pension is private sector.

I do think we will have to reduce government pension payouts .

Last edited 1 year ago by MTF
23
-2
ellie-em
ellie-em
1 year ago

I don’t suppose it helped when Labour’s Gordon Brown and the Cons George Osborne raided the pension pots.

22
0
WyrdWoman
WyrdWoman
1 year ago
Reply to  ellie-em

Not to mention some private sector company ‘raiders’ like the Mirror Group and Marconi – these stole millions from many thousands of people just to prop up share prices.

13
-1
Covid-1984
Covid-1984
1 year ago

We’ll get rid of the Conservative Party this election but unfortunately it’ll be 5 years of depression until we get rid of Labour. New beginning in 2029. But will it all be too late. God help us 🙏

19
0
Uncle Monty
Uncle Monty
1 year ago

In the absence of any government savings on the behalf of the public sector employees who ‘contributed’ to their pensions all their working lives; these pensions can’t even be ‘cashed out’. They depend on tax income from those currently in employment.
The UK Government is therefore running a Ponzi scheme.
China, Russia, Norway, Saudi Arabia all have sovereign wealth funds to invest on behalf of their citizens.

Last edited 1 year ago by Uncle Monty
11
0
Marcus Aurelius knew
Marcus Aurelius knew
1 year ago
Reply to  Uncle Monty

Montenegro also has a sovereign wealth fund.

0
0
Hester
Hester
1 year ago

And the Tories have increased the size of thePublic sector over that of Labour (no fan of either being politically marooned).Whilst we in the Private sector had our pensions ruinedand plundered by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and the Tories continue the theft, the parasitic politicians and the civil servants, DEI workers in public sector get to continue the leeching whilst they work from home and produce NOTHING which grows the economy.
And they wonder why people have lost all faith in so called “democracy”

26
0

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