‘Anybody who has studied Farage, going back to 2006 when he first became leader of UKIP, then the Brexit party and now Reform and again and again and again he ends up falling out with leading figures.’
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has been slammed as a ‘dictator’ of which ever party he leads in a brutal assessment of his character traits by political commentator Michael Crick.
Crick told Times radio that the very public bust up Farage was having with Rupert Lowe is just one example of Farage’s inability to “work with other big leader figures” and his “dictator” style leadership.
Reform UK has been engulfed in an internal spat in recent days between Farage and Lowe, with Lowe also suspended by the party over allegations of bullying made by two women and alleged threats made against Reform’s chair Zia Yusuf.
Some have questioned the timing of the announcement, as it came the day after Mr Lowe appeared to question Nigel Farage’s leadership of the party. Lowe has denied all the allegations made against him.
In an interview with the Daily Mail last week, Lowe accused Farage of acting like the “messiah” as splits within the party burst into the open. He also said that Farage must “learn to delegate” and that Reform needed to “start behaving as if we are leading and not merely protesting”.
Last week also saw Reform announce that it had reported Lowe to the police after he allegedly threatened party staff with violence.
Appearing on Times Radio to discuss the latest incidents, political commentator Michael Crick described Farage as a ‘dictator’ of whichever party he leads.
He said: “It’s the same story over and over again. Anybody who has studied Farage, going back to 2006 when he first became leader of UKIP, then the Brexit party and now Reform and again and again and again he ends up falling out with leading figures.
“Patrick O’Flynn…Neil Hamilton, Catherine Blaiklock, Nicky Sinclair, Godfrey Bloom, Suzanne Evans, Robert Kilroy-Silk, the list goes on and on and on.
“Farage finds it very difficult to work with other big figures around him. Now Rupert Lowe is not that substantial a figure, unlike Elon Musk I don’t think he’s a potential leader of the Reform Party, but he is a bit of a name, he was a chairman of Southampton, made himself quite unpopular with the fans, he is slightly well known compared with some of the other Reform MPs and of course he’s been quite critical of Farage, he is fed up with the autocratic way in which Farage runs his party.
“He is essentially a dictator of whichever party he leads, and he says well you’ve got to do it my way I lead us to electoral success which is true and other people have to go along with it and if they don’t like it they end up in a big bust up …”
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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