# Reform faces split as Farage hits back over ‘messianic’ criticism

Nigel Farage calls Rupert Lowe ‘utterly completely wrong’ after Reform MP criticised his leadership style

  
**Rowena Mason**  
Whitehall editor  
Thu 6 Mar 2025 14.45 EST  
First published on Thu 6 Mar 2025 10.25 EST

Reform UK is facing a split at the top after  called one of his most prominent MPs “utterly completely wrong” for calling him the “messianic” leader of a protest party.

Farage hit out at  after the Great Yarmouth MP and former Southampton FC chair criticised his leadership publicly in an interview.

The MP’s criticism comes after internal Reform speculation about tensions with Farage, especially after Musk’s intervention.

Asked by the Daily Mail if Farage would make a good prime minister, Lowe said: “It’s too early to know whether Nigel will deliver the goods. He can only deliver if he surrounds himself with the right people.

“Nigel is a fiercely independent individual and is extremely good at what we have done so far. He has got messianic qualities. Will those messianic qualities distill into sage leadership? I don’t know.”

Farage responded to Lowe in an interview on TalkTV saying he was “utterly, completely wrong” about Reform being a protest party. He also pointed out that Lowe was already on the frontbench of the party, adding: “Perhaps he wants to be prime minister, half the House of Commons do.”

“We’re not a protest party and he’s on the frontbench. What is he talking about? With only five people, you can’t really have a shadow cabinet, can you? We’ve got a lot of development to do but we’re absolutely not a protest party,” he said.

Asked if Lowe had been told to wind his neck in, Farage said there was “no point telling him what to do or what not to do … the fact is, we are making huge strides”. Pressed on whether Lowe would be an MP at the next election, Farage said: “I hope so, he seems to be taking a tone that suggests he won’t accept us.”

During the interview, Lowe also suggested MPs should be paid about £250,000 but that the chamber should be halved in number, and referred to the BBC as a “cancer at the heart of Britain”.

A  Lowe said of himself: “I sit in parliament with my experience in farming, various risk-taking businesses, and so I speak with a plain tongue … I am a bit like the one-eyed man in the land of the blind. But, funnily enough, the one-eyed man is usually in charge in the end in the land of the blind.”

Musk, the world’s richest man had hinted at a possible £100m donation to Reform but later said Farage “doesn’t have what it takes” after a spat over the party’s decision to distance itself from the far-right leader Tommy Robinson. At the time, Musk said: “I have not met Rupert Lowe but his statements online that I have read make a lot of sense.”

Lowe has been more favourable towards Robinson and has a substantial grassroots following among Reform members, as well as very high levels of engagement on social media. He appeared to be the only one out of Farage’s five MPs not to be at the party’s fundraising event

Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said there was “internecine warfare at the top of Reform”, claiming that “their MPs are more concerned with their own egos, and advancing their personal ambitions, rather than standing up for the British people”.

“You can’t just empty slogans,” said Philp. “Only the Conservatives, under Kemi Badenoch’s leadership, can be trusted to be a real opposition, and real alternative, to this dreadful Labour government.”
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