Farage’s fight against Burnham is hard enough with a divided Right – doing it with a split party will be a fool’s errand

NIGEL FARAGE has finally got his feet up with a hanky on his head. While the knackered Reform boss tries to sit on a deckchair, his party has wasted no time in using his holiday to settle some scores back home. Farage’s fight against Burnham is hard enough with a divided Right – doing it with a split party will be a fool’s errand Farage has finally got his feet up with a hanky on his head Credit: Getty Nige has more than earned his break. It’s been a tough few months since Reform painted the political map turquoise at the local elections. After the savage murder of Ann Widdecombe, an unrelenting sift of party finances and a scrappy by-election in Clacton, the heady days of May seem a distant dream. Sign up for The Sun newsletter Thank you! Their useful bogeyman Keir Starmer is vanquished; now a shiny new PM is eating into their poll lead with platitudes. A new threat on the Right from Restore, plus the opening salvos of an Establishment onslaught that will continue until the next election, have left the once-bold insurgents looking rather out of sorts. If it’s a trap, too many in Reform are walking straight into it. Briefing wars have spilled beyond the watering holes of Westminster as lurid tales of paranoia and political machinations reach all the way to Washington DC. Even very senior members of Trump’s administration are scratching their heads asking me: “Are Reform going to blow it?” Mad claims about bugging offices, temper tantrums and daily attempts at one-upmanship are starting to look ­dangerously like the sack-of-rats collapse of Ukip, which imploded a decade ago under the weight of its own success, amateurism and too many egos. Most read in The Sun Fed up with being locked in the cupboard, Tory defector Suella Braverman was on resignation watch, while attempts to lure over another major name collapsed after the well- known figure got cold feet amid the chaos. Meanwhile the backroom boys bicker about who’s up, who’s down, who gets to ride in the helicopter and who has the true ear of the King. But the stakes are so much higher than back in 2015. This isn’t a single-issue ca­mpaign any more, but a very real chance to actually run the country. Yet some Reform apparatchiks seem more interested in doing each other over than turning their fire on political opponents. That’s a major red flag to the huge amount of talent that needs to be recruited to avoid this moonshot exploding on the launch pad. While spin doctors jostle for position, a team of policy nerds has been quietly assembled by the increasingly influential ­academic James Orr, who is writing a proper manifesto to be ready for an election as soon as next year. Softly spoken but carrying a big stick, Orr has become one of the most powerful people inside the party, with his close links to the US Right and a professionalism often found lacking in Reform HQ. While Andy Burnham’s soft-soap summer start may be easy to mock, Reform should be under no illusions what threat a united Left does to their hopes of taking office Credit: Getty Former Tory Robert Jenrick is ­making sure the sums add up with the benefit reform policy paper Credit: Alamy He’s gently trying to convert Farage’s — at times varied — vision into a feasible political package to win over 35 per cent of the country, while former Tory Robert Jenrick is ­making sure the sums add up. But some in Orr’s orbit fear the whole thing will be a waste of time if the squabbling is not nipped in the bud and sharpish. Take Monday’s hefty benefit reform policy paper. Exactly the sort of detailed proposals a functioning opposition party should be providing to tackle one of the top three issues of the day. For the first time in months the party was back on policy rather than on the back foot over donations. Yet before the ink was even dry on Tuesday’s newspapers the suspension of prominent member Tim Montgomerie was leaked, sparking a fresh round of bloodletting after the commentator-turned-campaigner took public aim at combative Reform donor and Shadow Home Sec Zia Yusuf. Tensions had been bubbling since Nigel Farage told our very own Jack Elsom during a chat on Clacton Pier that he would be giving Yusuf a ticking off over an ill-judged rant branding decorated former Scots Guard and ex-Tory Defence ­Secretary Sir Ben Wallace a “traitor”. While publicly defending Yusuf to the hilt and assuring his position is safe, Farage has privately bemoaned his man’s gadfly social media use. This week alone on X, Yusuf threatened to jail the boss of Vodafone and declared any politician deemed “Right Honourable” to be among “the most dishonourable people in the country”. Which would have come as a shock to his late colleague the Right Honourable Ann Widdecombe. Given the limited reach to voters on the platform, many wonder why Yusuf even bothers stirring trouble there when he is gaining far more support on TikTok and Facebook. One seasoned insider blamed the rise of Restore for the increasingly erratic content, saying: “Zia is just reeling from suddenly not being the most right-wing person in the public eye any more, so he’s going further and ­further for attention.” Ann Widdecombe was brutally murdered in July Credit: PA Reform donor and Shadow Home Sec Zia Yusuf Credit: Alamy While he has plenty of defenders in the party, few would mind seeing Yusuf wind it in a bit before he derails more than just a Monday morning press conference. Now no one is saying there will not — or should not — be disagreements and differing personalities in major parties, but it does strike me that an awful lot of bandwidth is being taken up by petty bulls**t. If heads need to be banged together then so be it, but as Farage told me in our last interview: “I’m perfectly relaxed about people disagreeing with me. Just don’t do it in public.” While Andy Burnham’s soft-soap summer start may be easy to mock, Reform should be under no illusions what threat a united Left does to their hopes of taking office. Come September the gloves will be off and there is only one party in the Government’s sights. If the PM can continue to stem Labour’s haemorrhaging to the Greens, it is curtains for that 35 per cent strategy that could see Farage handed the keys to No10. It’s remarkable that he has even got this far; to blow it up now from beneath him would be an unforgivable betrayal in the eyes of millions of voters desperate for real change. It’s going to be hard enough for Farage to try to fight Burnham with a divided Right. To make him do so with a divided party is worse than a fool’s errand. Comment now