What’s happening here, then?
Nigel Farage is doing the splits!
Really? Is… is there a video?
Oh sorry – what I meant was, Nigel Farage is dealing with splits on two different fronts.
Oh.
Yeah. Caught your attention though, didn’t it?
One of these splits suggests a possible future headache for Reform UK. The other is indicative of a very real, very current threat to Farage’s party.
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Let’s take the possible future headache first.
All right. Reform’s Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick graced Trevor Phillips’ Sky News studio on Sunday to chat about a new policy of scrapping income tax on overtime pay for workers earning less than £75,000.
But Phillips popped in a question about the party’s social housing policy, asking if a ‘foreign person who is legally resident but lives in social housing’ would be deported just because they live in social housing under Reform.
Jenrick replied: ‘Well, not exclusively because of that. If they fail to meet our criteria because they’re not in work or they’re not working as many hours, not earning enough money, then they won’t be able to renew their work visa.’
Enter Zia Yusuf, the Reform Home Affairs spokesman, who quote-tweeted the clip almost two days later and added: ‘Robert’s answer is not Reform policy.
‘As the person responsible for our deportation plan I want ensure [sic] people know where we stand: If a foreign national lives in social housing at taxpayer expense, they automatically fail our economic test and will be deported.’
Oops. Maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Yusuf’s ended up in a bit of a spat with Jenrick – they clashed constantly before the latter defected from the Tories.
But then, there’s also the time Yusuf quit the party for 48 hours after disagreeing with Reform MP Sarah Pochin on whether there should be a ban on the burqa.
And Yusuf was at the centre of the row which led to Rupert Lowe being booted out from Reform and investigated by the police. We could maybe say this wannabe home secretary has a ‘spiky’ relationship with several of his colleagues.
Rupert Lowe… where have I heard that name recently…
Ah yes, this is where we get into the very real, very current threat.
After being dumped by Reform, Lowe went on to found a movement which became his own far-right political party named Restore Britain.
Restore only had a very small presence at the local elections earlier this month, only contesting ten seats in Great Yarmouth – but it won all ten.
And now it’s looking like this rival outfit might have its first real-world impact on Nigel Farage.
There have been precious few polls of the electorate in the Makerfield by-election, and we should take any of them with a pinch of salt as the sample size is so small.
But a Survation telephone poll last week put Labour’s Andy Burnham at 43%, Reform’s Robert Kenyon at 40%… and Restore’s Rebecca Shepherd at 7%.
To state the obvious, it looks a lot like Reform would be a lot closer to having this race in the bag if some voters weren’t peeling away to Restore.
There’s still three weeks to go in a contest that’s already got a bit dirty, but the rise of Reform’s right-wing rivals could prove to be a major storyline.
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