Revealed: Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe hosted dinner party for potential donors hours before he was reported to police by party colleagues amid allegations of bullying and violent threats
Rupert Lowe was hosting a dinner party for potential donors hours before he was reported to police by colleagues at Reform UK amid allegations of bullying and violent threats, the Mail can reveal.
The revelation the Reform MP was still hosting fundraising events alongside treasurer Nick Candy undermines claims by some in his party that he was ‘out of control’ and no longer a team player.
He is facing an independent investigation into claims of bullying at his offices. The party said it had received evidence of ‘serious bullying’ and ‘derogatory’ remarks made about women, with two employees said to have made allegations.
He was also reported to police over claims that he had threatened party chairman Zia Yusuf.
Mr Lowe, who had the Reform whip withdrawn on Friday, has denied the claims.
At the event last Thursday, Mr Lowe introduced prospective backers to Mr Candy at the exclusive private dining club Oswald’s in London’s Mayfair.
The event took place the same day Mr Lowe told the Mail in an interview that it was ‘too early’ to judge if leader Nigel Farage could become PM, insisting Reform had to change from being a ‘protest party led by the Messiah into a properly structured party’.
Mr Lowe claims the ‘vexatious’ claims against him were directly linked to his criticism of Reform’s leadership.
Deputy leader Richard Tice was challenged yesterday over why Mr Lowe had only been reported to police last week – three months after the alleged threat of violence.
He told Sky News: ‘There have been a variety of incidents. You get to the point where you cannot tolerate this any more.
‘If the situation has become impossible, which regrettably is where it had got to, and ... it’s not going to end well. We made the right judgement.’
Over the weekend Reform insiders accused Mr Lowe of talking to the Mail to try to pre-empt the disclosure of the KC-led inquiry into the claims against him.
Mr Tice said: ‘Zia Yusuf made the decision to launch an independent investigation, by a KC, at the end of February.
'Rupert was told at the end of February, sometime before the [Daily Mail] interview appeared.'
The interview with the Mail was held on February 25 and Mr Lowe was told by Reform of the allegations against him on February 28.
Mr Lowe said: ‘Nigel Farage refers to Reform as “his” party. It belongs to the members. They built it. Spending their £2 membership subs on this vindictive plot to kick me out is a betrayal.’
The war of words between Mr Lowe, who is consulting lawyers, and the party leadership is intensifying rather than dying down.
A friend of Mr Lowe, a former chairman of Southampton Football Club, said: ‘The party’s story is unravelling.
‘If, as Richard Tice says, they could no longer work with Rupert why was he with the treasurer at Oswald’s?
'He was with one of the most senior figures in Reform the night before they threw him under a bus.
'The complaint to the police was because Rupert compared Nigel Farage to a Messiah. We all know what happened to the last Messiah.’
Last night the BBC reported a senior lawyer appointed by Reform to investigate claims against Mr Lowe denied making comments he attributed to her.
Last Friday, he wrote of her ‘dismay’ and ‘shock’ at the process and claimed ‘no evidence against me has been sent to her’. But the KC told the BBC she was in ‘the regrettable position of having to correct the record’, saying she had not expressed these views.
Yesterday Mr Farage warned that the public ‘does not like political parties that engage in constant infighting’.
In the Telegraph, he wrote: ‘Reform UK matters more now than it has ever done. That is why it is so important that our party behaves responsibly at all times.’
