Nigel Farage has sacked his Reform UK party’s deputy leadership team, stirring tensions in the insurgent right wing outfit just a week after it won five seats in the UK’s general election.
Ben Habib and David Bull, who were the party’s co-deputy leaders, were removed by Mr Farage on Thursday and replaced with Richard Tice, the party’s former leader who along with Mr Farage won election to the House of Commons last week.
The shake-up prompted an angry response from Mr Habib, who failed to win election last week in the Northampton constituency of Wellingborough and Rushden.
“I have just been informed by Nigel Farage that Richard Tice is taking over as deputy leader of the party. Consequently I no longer hold that position. I am considering my position more generally in light of this change,” Mr Habib wrote on the social media platform X.
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“I have long held concerns about the control of the party and the decision-making processes. I will reflect on all of this. The key for me is that Reform UK stays true to the promises made to the British people. The movement we have created does not belong to us, it belongs to the people.”
Reform UK, however, belongs to Mr Farage and a handful of others. He incorporated it not as a traditional political party, but as a private company with him in majority control as a mechanism to quell the internal dissent that previously plagued the United Kingdom Independence Party (Ukip).
There had previously been tensions in party following the return to the fray last month of Mr Farage, who re-took his position as leader of the party early in the election campaign.
He promptly endorsed the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) candidates Ian Paisley Junior and Sammy Wilson, despite a formal pact for Reform to support the Traditional Unionist Voice party of Jim Allister that is a rival of the DUP. The Reform-TUV pact had been championed by Mr Habib.
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Mr Farage also announced on Thursday that Lee Anderson, who defected from the Conservatives earlier this year, will be the party’s chief whip in the House of Commons. Zia Yusuf, a businessman and party donor, was appointed as party chairman.
Shortly after the announcement of the leadership shake-up, Mr Tice showed up on the parliamentary terrace overlooking the river Thames for an official photo shoot.
Mr Farage has been prominent around Westminster this week after he became an MP at the eighth time of asking. He has showed up repeatedly in Strangers, the bar on the parliamentary estate. He was also one of the star turns at the Spectator magazine’s high-powered summer garden party in Westminster on Tuesday evening.
Reform won almost 4.1 million votes in last week’s election, 600,000 more than the Liberal Democrats, but just five seats compared to the Liberal Democrats’ 72.
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