Jenrick and Braverman: Will Farage kick the ‘embarrassing baggage’ out of Reform?
Rupert Lowe has suggested Restore Britain would work with Reform UK to unite the UK’s hard right on a few conditions – including kicking ex-Tories out of the party. Has their recruitment damaged Nigel Farage, and will he agree to this request?
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What’s the story?
Nigel Farage is in a bit of a pickle.
It’s nothing to do with his by-election against a bin, (he’ll certainly win that) but a more existential threat from Restore Britain, the party founded and led by Rupert Lowe, who left Reform in 2025 under ugly and extremely public circumstances.
Lowe has now suggested Restore and Reform unite to become an aligned hard-right political party, in the hope that together they form a “patriotic government”, and push forward with, what some see as, their extremist policies.
There’s some conditions to Lowe’s offer, however. He has said a Restore/Reform coalition would only be possible if Farage agrees to mass deportations, a ban on the burqa, a referendum on the death penalty in the UK, and to kick out all the former Tories in Reform.
And the last point is where the problem lies for Farage – he has yet to voice any issue with the other demands.
Robert Jenrick, Suella Braverman, Lee Anderson and Danny Kruger, four of Reform’s seven MPs, are all ex-Conservatives.
“Lowe has managed to kind of tease out of Farage that the people now bulking up Reform in terms of serious politicians, the serious players, are all these ex-Tories,” says Emily Maitlis.
“Many of whom were in charge of the immigration policies that went so badly wrong.
“He now has four senior, old school conservatives, which I think have taken Farage off track of being the insurgent, of being leader of a new nimble party.”
In a speech on Monday, he described Braverman, Jenrick and Kruger as having done a “fantastic job” when they were Tories, despite both Braverman and Jenrick having worked on immigration, leading to the situation he is now rallying against.
Maitlis describes them as “embarrassing baggage”
“The fact that Lowe has said to get rid of those guys has made Farage go out and defend them,” Maitlis adds.
“It's very admirable that he's remaining loyal to these new colleagues, but there is something quite awkward now about Farage having to defend the very people that, in a previous incarnation, he was slagging off for having failed the country so badly.”
What was Farage trying to prove by welcoming so many former Tories?
The plan has worked, until now.
Bringing four former Tories onboard grew Reform quickly, without the need for by-elections, and most were quick to fall in line with the Reform approach to politics. Braverman and Jenrick commenting constantly on migrants in the UK, Anderson patting a bacon sandwich on social media every week to supposedly annoy Muslim people.
Lewis Goodall says there is a question over what Farage was trying to prove by welcoming so many former Tories to Reform.
“He was trying to send a signal that the Conservative Party was dead, buried and Reform was the only game in town,” he says.
“The cost of that has been that it has allowed someone like Lowe to try and paint Farage and Reform as just Tory-light or Tory in a different guise.
“Lowe has grabbed all of the insurgent energy, particularly from the online space.”
Lowe has received significant backing on X/Twitter from Elon Musk.
“Maybe the former Tories can be the sacrificial lamb if there's something to be done with Restore more broadly,” adds Emily.
But can these two men work together again?
Lowe was kicked out of Reform in early 2025, and has since seen Restore Britain gain small, but not insignificant, vote share in local elections and by-elections in the year since.
Reform spent months as the top polling party in the UK, but that has crashed since investigations were launched into Farage’s finances, with Parliamentary Standards inquiry set to resume into a £5 million donation from a crypto billionaire. A new poll shows him as the least popular party leader in the UK.
Working with Lowe could possibly revive his standing, especially if Musk gets behind the both of them, but only if he is willing to accept Lowe’s demands.
“Restore and Rupert Lowe genuinely feel that old Tories would kill the Lowe brand, which is about 'moving forward', 'modernising', not being a party of the traditional Tory right,” says Maitlis.
“But did he just set a trap for Farage, that he knows Farage will not accept?
“Farage accepting makes Lowe look magnanimous, but Farage can never acquiesce to that.”
The pair have already fallen out with Farage criticising Lowe’s offer being made in a lengthy public video, and Lowe calling Farage a liar over a phone call which was meant to take place on Sunday night.
“You have to stand back and ask how well these two guys would run a party together if they can't actually organise a phone call,” says Maitlis.
“You have this sense that they are like rutting stags. They're trying to come together, but the antlers are just getting in the way already.
“They haven't even got to stage one, and already they've locked horns.”