The Discombobulation of the New Right

Just when they thought they’d won conservatives are looking like losers again

“A fistfight in a phone booth” is how the BBC’s Political Editor, Chris Mason, described the uncivil war that has broken out in the Reform Party. This split in the insurgent party of the UK Right is a direct result of its leader, Nigel Farage, appearing too supportive of Donald Trump’s ruthless assault on the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelensky. As the Daily Telegraph reported, many in the party, and many Reform voters, think Farage has “drunk too much of the MAGA Kool-Aid”. The discombobulation of Reform reflects in microcosm the evident confusion amongst European nationalists over how to deal with the belligerent ultra-nationalist in the White House — who also happens to be the putative leader of the global New Right. Even Jeremy Clarkson is outraged at JD Vance’s treatment of Ukraine.

I won’t go into the content of the split between the MP Rupert Lowe and the Reform leader, Nigel Farage, which even the barrister brought in to resolve the dispute evidently can’t make sense of. The irony of Reform politicians accusing each other of bullying and intimidation, and calling in the police like some woke snowflakes, is self-evidently amusing. But let’s just call it what it is: a bitter faction fight over the leadership of this organisation, minuscule in representation but big in public opinion.

It dates from the moment one month or so ago when Elon Musk, Trump’s excitable right-hand man, declared that Nigel Farage was not fit to lead the Reform Party. Mr Lowe appeared to agree, describing Farage’s behaviour as “messianic” — and not in a good way. Like the Trotskyite left, the right seems to like nothing better than a bit of faction fighting. Nigel Farage’s earlier vehicles, UKIP and the Brexit Party, were similarly fractious.

But there is more to it than that. A lot more.