Rupert Lowe is courting Elon Musk and trying to get him to think he’s “the good guy”, Nigel Farage has said, in the latest exchange of barbs between the Reform leader and his former MP.
Farage said the Great Yarmouth MP would not be allowed back into Reform and accused him of trying to “damage” the party after the police began investigating alleged verbal threats made by Lowe.
Lowe, 67, has repeatedly criticised Farage since Reform accused him of bullying staff and making threats towards Zia Yusuf, the party’s chairman. Lowe denies all the allegations.
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Farage, 60, told The Daily Telegraph: “This is all an attempt not just to damage Reform, but to get Elon Musk thinking that he’s the good guy.”
He said: “Basically, what is happening here is Rupert Lowe knows there’s no way back. And he said to Lee Anderson, our whip and MP: ‘I will slit the throat of the Reform Party.’ He’s out to cause maximum destruction and damage.”
Lowe has accused Farage of attempting to “silence” him from speaking out on grooming gangs. He said: “At a speech in Essex, I was instructed by Farage’s team, sanctioned by him, to remove a call to deport all complicit foreign national family members.”
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But Farage said: “I’ve campaigned strongly on this for years and it’s a completely false assertion. The idea you can deport whole communities who have British passports is just not possible under British law and never was.
“Furthermore, his speech in Essex that he talks about, what I stopped him from using was the word ‘repatriation’. I told him not to use the word ‘repatriation’ as well as ‘mass deportations’, because I thought it was a very grave, dark and dangerous use of language. This is all an attempt not just to damage Reform, but to get Elon Musk thinking that he’s the good guy.”
Musk previously suggested that he could support Lowe in replacing Farage as Reform leader. It was reported this week that the X owner could be interested in backing a new party if Lowe was to set one up.
Lowe said: “Reform should not belong to Farage, it should belong to the members. Let them decide if I am welcome in the party. Hold a vote to see if they approve of this malicious witch-hunt launched by Reform’s leadership. Farage claims Reform is a democratic party. I say prove it.”
