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Nigel Farage has lost the rights to the Brexit Party name in an apparent admin slip – the party he led to victory in the last ever European elections in the UK, effectively took out Theresa May’s premiership and ensured Britain would leave the EU.
He may not care now that he leads its successor party Reform UK but it is a rare symbolic loss for a man whose ascendancy currently appears to be inevitable.
The story of how he snatched the Brexit Party name from the original owner, Catherine Blaiklock, and she subsequently got it back is an allegory of why the unstoppable veneer of Farage and Reform may only be superficial and not a fait accompli.
The packed Reform rallies, leads in polls and apparent weakness of the Tories and Labour has given Farage what seems like the perfect environment to replace one of the main two parties – something only ever achieved by Labour a century ago in the history of British democracy.
But since the very public falling out with Elon Musk, key chinks in the armour have appeared. Not least the concern that many of the right-wingers who have followed Farage support Tommy Robinson and believe Farage’s stance on Robinson signals the Reform leader is going soft on issues related to race and religion.
Discontent in the ranks
For those who care to look, there is a lot of unhappiness behind the scenes in Reform, not least with the arrival of Zia Yusuf as chair to “professionalise” the party.
An early sign was Yusuf waiting for Farage to be out of the country to sack the long-time press officer Gawain Towler. Towler was considered too eccentric, even though he is very popular with political journalists.
Towler, who has been sacked from Ukip and other Farage entities at least four times before, has reinvented himself as a talking head and remained loyal while others have not.
Noticeably businessman and former Brexit Party MEP Ben Habib, who was deputy leader of Reform until the election, has now left the party.
He does not bother to hide his dislike for Farage and it appears that the attempts to give the party to its members were behind the falling out. Habib described the democratisation reforms of Reform brought in by Yusuf as “a sham”.
Habib was unhappy at the way Farage swept back into Reform and took control during the election, pushing people like him to the fringes or out altogether. He was also irritated by Farage dropping established policies on the fly in the middle of live radio interviews.
On top of this there are claims that Farage and his deputy (former leader) Richard Tice are barely speaking, although the body language between the two men in parliament seems to suggest that is not true.
Meanwhile, another stalwart to announce he has quit the party this week was London mayoral candidate Howard Cox, the founder of FairfuelUK. Cox said in an interview that he was being threatened with expulsion for openly supporting Robinson.
Then there was the story this weekend of 12 Reform councillors announcing they were quitting the party – although Mr Yusuf said this was ahead of them being expelled for breaking the rules.
The Tommy Robinson problem
Farage has always made a virtue of banning people with associations to the far right from his various parties. For example, he would not allow anybody from the old BNP into Ukip.
But as the controversy with 2024 general election candidates underlined, he has always attracted voters with far-right sensibilites.
This is why Musk’s demands that far-right activist Tommy Robinson should be freed from prison, and his description of him as a political prisoner, resonated with so many Reform members.
When Farage and Tice disowned Robinson it was not just Musk who was angry. People actually left the party in protest (although it may not have registered on the public membership ticker the party has been promoting).
The uncomfortable reality is that when Musk said Farage was not fit to lead Reform, it had a surprising resonation with right-wingers inside and outside the party because of the Robinson issue.
Notably, Cox and Habib were on the airwaves criticising the Reform leadership over it.
It also became an issue last week when Farage appeared to agree that if Trump wanted the UK to take back Isis bride Shamima Begum, then it should. This on top of a previous interview where he suggested the party might need to “embrace Islam” – a sensibility the vast majority of his voters would not support.
Tory fightback
Not all those who have left Reform have done so because they are “right-wing nutters”, as a Labour MP dismissively described them this week.
A good number have headed to the Tories to join the former Ukipers like Farage’s ex-confidente Annabelle Trixy Sanderson who are supporting Kemi Badenoch.
Among the defectors is one of the regional campaigners responsible for winning Reform one of their five seats.
Badenoch has a plan in front of her from senior ex-Reformers and Ukippers on setting up a Reform attack unit specifically aimed at taking out Farage. She has not given it the green light yet, but that may only be because of a shortage of funds.
A conflicting message
Reform has been boosted by the decision by billionaire businessman Nick Candy to leave the Tories and join the party. But while Candy’s cash and fundraising ability are certainly helpful, he also represents a somewhat conflicting message.
Reform, like many parties, has made a point of supporting the “nimby” instincts of voters who do not want the green areas around them concreted over and built on.
However, the question is already being asked about how this sits with having Candy, a major property developer, and Tice, another property developer, playing such key roles in the party. Already this issue is in the process of being weaponised by Reform’s opponents and critics.
Defective defections
Another strategy being relentlessly pursued by Reform is to get high-profile Tory defectors on board.
But the trail of “failed Tory MPs” who lost their seats but had previously attacked the party is not helping with membership morale.
There are a lot of questions about how and why Dame Andrea Jenkyns is running for mayor of Lincolnshire, a county she has no connections with, while the other proposed candidate was simply ditched.
Meanwhile, Reform’s chair in Dudley North resigned when the former Tory MP Marco Longhi was unveiled as a new member. It had echoes of the former Reform Clacton candidate discovering at the last minute that he was to be replaced by Farage.
Brexit Party taken and lost
The Brexit Party name was initially registered by Catherine Blaiklock, Ukip’s former economy spokesperson. In 2018 she was persuaded to do a deal with Farage to effectively allow him to take over and lead the party as a limited company in April 2019.
She was forced to resign as a director because Farage told her in a letter ahead of the 2019 European elections that her right-wing social media output would prevent them from being given a bank account by Metro Bank.
She had been accused of being Islamophobic on Twitter and was at the heart of a media storm which threatened to derail the insurgent party as Westminster, and Theresa May’s government were being ripped apart by the Brexit debate.
But he added: “I can give you my assurance that you can take on Brandon Lewis in Great Yarmouth and you will probably win.”
The original trust deed for the party Blaiklock drew up in February 2019 would have given each member a share in it, allowing early democratisation. This was also abandoned.
Blaiklock was quickly frozen out and blacklisted. The 2019 general election saw candidates stood down against defending Tory MPs, and then Rupert Lowe was chosen for the Great Yarmouth seat in 2024.
Such was her treatment, she told The Independent: “I had a nervous breakdown over it. I ran a Merrill Lynch currency options desk at 24 and had never been treated like that.”
But in a final twist, after the Brexit Party became the Reform Party, Farage and Tice somehow allowed the Brexit Party name to go in what appears to be an admin oversight, and Blaiklock bought it back last year. She has even been in talks with the Electoral Commission about allowing it to run candidates.
No victory without Farage but…
Blaiklock refers to Farage as “a Frankenstein monster” and a “dictator” but she is not the first or last to fall victim to Farage’s absolute ruthlessness – ask Habib or, before that, Robert Kilroy-Silk and others.
As well as being superficially charismatic and charming (as Farage is), the most successful politicians are also ruthless and do not allow people to get in the way. Along with Tony Blair, Farage is the most successful politician Britain has produced in the 21st century.
The fact remains that without Farage, Reform has no chance of success in its goals of going into government and replacing the Tories. That was a message relayed strongly to Musk in the last few days which have seen the two draw closer together again.
But at the same time the last week has shown that his methods and Marmite persona could end up being the biggest obstacle to the party achieving its ultimate aim.
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