Nigel Farage is holding back Reform UK

To anyone familiar with Nigel Farage’s history, his latest row with Rupert Lowe will seem awfully familiar. The Reform UK leader has repeatedly demonstrated a remarkable ability to call political parties into being; he has never yet been willing or able to let them outgrow him.

This pattern played out several times in the days of Ukip, when Farage stepped aside in favour of a female leader only to seize the reins again mere days later. It happened again at last year’s general election, when he ignored a deal between Reform and the Northern Irish Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) to endorse his friend, Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) politician Ian Paisley Jr.

That one ended with Farage and Ben Habib, then co-deputy leader of Reform, backing different candidates in the same seat. The latter’s man won, and Jim Allister now sits with Reform in the House of Commons. But having crossed Farage, Habib’s time in the party was up.

Now the party finds itself mired in a very public dispute after Lowe described his leader as “messianic” in an interview with the Daily Mail this week, adding that “it’s too early to know whether Nigel will deliver the goods.” Farage responded yesterday by saying that his MP was “utterly, completely wrong”, musing: “Perhaps he wants to be prime minister.” As an elected MP, Lowe would be harder to shift than Habib. But he could still lose the whip — or even, as he hinted to the Mail, leave of his own accord.

How big a problem is this for Reform? That depends on two things. The first is the extent to which the mere fact of a public row undermines the party’s image; the second is whether or not Lowe is right about Reform’s sluggish attempts to develop a proper policy infrastructure, and if that matters.

On the first count, a single quarrel is unlikely to make much of a difference this far out from a general election. But chronic infighting probably would. In this parliament, Reform has a huge opportunity to win attention and set the agenda far beyond what might normally be expected of a five-MP party; it would be an act of historic self-harm to make internal rows the main story.

Policy is another matter. In the short term, no minor party needs a detailed programme several years away from a general election. But if Reform is to have any hope of delivering in office, or even being taken seriously as a potential coalition partner, it will need a programme by 2029. The hard work of building that up needs to start now.

If nothing else, this would force Reform — run by angry Thatcherites but aiming almost exclusively at Labour-held seats in 2029 —  to confront the thorny question of what sort of party it actually is. Which would probably be a good thing to work out before it selects candidates for an election in which it could achieve a real breakthrough.

This process would also allow Reform to grapple, albeit more covertly, with the Farage question. He created the party, and at present it more or less subsists entirely on his star power. But Farage is 60; even if he is likely to lead Reform into the next election, the odds of him leading it into the one after that are surely very long indeed. Then again, Lowe, who is 67, may not be the future of the party either.

To have any hope of seriously challenging the Tories in the medium term, let alone replacing them outright, Reform needs to grow bigger than its leader. A thousand tall poppies need to bloom, but they can only do that if Farage learns to let them.

If he doesn’t, the long-term damage will be great. Only in January, 10 councillors quit the party over his “autocratic manner”. Unlike its surging membership, these are the people who would form the backbone of a serious ground campaign, which Reform will need if it is ever to survive without its leader’s star power. That is, if Farage is willing to let it happen.