Lowe Expectations
Ben Wildsmith
I got involved in a bit of online unpleasantness with Great Yarmouth MP Rupert Lowe this week.
Lowe-IQ, who was drummed out of Reform UK after falling out with Nigel Farage, seems to spend the majority of his time on Elon Musk’s X platform. Indeed, the NAZI-saluting tech billionaire has expressed a preference for Rupes as a more hardcore proponent of ‘remigration’ than the Reform UK leader.
Last week, Lowe announced that he would like to see the Senedd abolished. Quite how this falls under the remit of an MP for a constituency that is nearer Amsterdam than Cardiff eludes me, but these types do seem to feel entitled to spout such nonsense.
Musk’s algorithm ensures that I see Lowe’s tweets despite not following him, and after his Cymru-baiting intervention earlier in the week I made the mistake of allowing one of his other posts to annoy me.
Idiot-charmer
‘I want to see mass deportations…’ began the odious idiot-charmer, and I was as piqued by the ‘I want’ entitlement of it as the foul sentiments he expressed. So, I quote-tweeted it under ‘I want to see you banned from Wales.’
It was late and I’d had a hard day at work. What ensued over the next 48 hours was as surreal as it was upsetting. Lowe-Quality himself had evidently been scrolling through his mentions and replied to my post claiming that ‘Many Welsh patriots’ have joined his pretend political party ‘Restore Britain’.
This was the cue for hundreds of his supporters, including a handful from Wales, to descend on my post and admonish me. Interestingly, all of them assumed that my problem with their creepy hero was solely to do with asylum seekers. None had picked up on his desire to override democracy in Wales.
Accordingly, I got a taste of how people who consider Reform UK to have sold out contribute to the national discussion on immigration.
The striking feature, for me, of their online ejaculations was how sexualised they were. Several expressed a hope that my female relatives would be raped by immigrants, with some suggesting that I would enjoy that as a spectacle.
Others deduced from my scorn for their bigoted daddy-substitute that I must be deviant in some way.
Psycho-sexual obsessions
The psycho-sexual obsessions on display recalled the repressed perversions that fuelled lynchings in the south of America. A therapist would have a field day with them.
Depressing as all this is, it’s possible to glean some hope from the level of support that Lowe-bar has attracted. He has nearly half a million followers on X and his tweet to me was liked by 7900 of them.
These are large enough numbers to suggest that Reform UK will face a challenge from the right, either by Lowe-wattage, Tommy Robinson, Ben Habib, or a combination of them.
If Nigel Farage loses the anti-immigration vote to more strident voices, then the rise of Reform UK will be halted. In the quest for respectability, Farage will lose credibility with the far right, and quite possibly game-changing funds from the MAGA movement and Musk.
Fringe parties are almost always the authors of their own destruction. Formed to be anti-establishment, they are forced to choose between ideological purity or electoral appeal and end up fighting like rats in a shoe.
The same problem will doubtless face Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana as they seek to establish their new enterprise.
‘Full credit’
By the end of the week, Lowe-character was giving ‘full credit to the Welsh’ for how we stand up for our culture. Naturally, this was so he could start on another ‘It’s illegal to say you are English these days’ rants.
For the right in general, Wales is never more than a passive scene onto which their Anglo-centric imperialism can be projected. When, on Thursday, he made a royal tit of himself by misidentifying a charity rowing team as migrants who had somehow managed to row 115 miles from Calais to Great Yarmouth (bypassing Clacton, as Farage tends to), I felt entitled to giggle.
As dangerous and disturbing as these people are, we shouldn’t overestimate their capacity for arse/elbow differentiation.
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Well done Ben for going elbow to knee against this unpleasant individual. But, you are right, we should never underestimate the reach of these individuals when they just spout filth and lies and somehow the population just wags it tail to them. To make it worse, Sir Kier just bends to their nonsense rather than staying focused on what actually matters which is the cost of living crisis, the dire state of public services and the blooming economy.
Lowe will be in a Welsh jail one day.
Full marks to you Ben, it just goes to show that the knuckle draggers who walk amongst us have only one myopic thought on their mind from the very moment they awake to the time they slouch back into sleep, no doubt even then to dream of foul ways to “deal” with the, as they see it “immigrant invasion”. Only by laying into these disgusting vermin of the far right wether face to face or, as you did online does it bring out their utter utter foulness & show their true colours. These brain dead morons that the likes of… Read more »
It’s great for these right wing anti establishment parties to stoke up the hate rhetoric now but once in power it’s extremely hard to continue to do so. In other words they become part of the hated establishment themselves and quickly fall out of power. People are looking for answers and someone to blame for their plight once they realise these populist parties aren’t the answer – they’ll be dumped very quickly.
I hope you are right, but my fear is that, when reformers realise how useless their leaders and the party are, they will simply move even further to the right, complaining that Farage and his ilk weren’t right-wing enough. Because of their low intelligence and lack of self-awareness, they will be unable to admit how wrong they were.
Spot on Ben! Lowe advances English exceptionalism. For him, and his acolytes, the Wales they wish to see is the 16th to 19th Century Wales. A Wales that is socially, linguistically, culturally, economically and politically suppressed and one that has to go cap in hand to its Anglo superiors. The arrival of Chartism, trade unionism, the vote, Nye’s health service, Welsh medium education, devolution, and Yes Cymru are all signs that the Taffs need to be put back in their box. The message from Lowe, Farage, and their fellow travellers, is clear. We are okay to go down the mine,… Read more »
Don’t forget Jim Griffiths and the 1946 National Insurance Act. One of the three great pillars of the Welfare State along with the above mentioned Aneurin Bevan with the NHS and Lloyd George’s state pension.
It is worth remembering it was Jim’s leadership of the 97 rebel Labour MPs in 1942 that dragged the Labour party to vote against his party’s deal with Winston Churchill’s Tories to neither endorse or condemn the Beverage Report and opening the door to our Welfare State.
He wouldn’t know what a day’s work is.
Lowe went ape over some people including an ex marine rowing around off Yarmouth on a charity row.
He is a nasty bit of work.
Regarding twitter. Why not ask the government why they are still using it, ask them why they do not proscribe it when people are openly calling for insurrection and IRA type groups to take action in the UK.
I can understand press keeping a presence on there but don’t interact. It’s musk nazi themed hate peddler and you will not win.
For once, I would have to dissent. Mr Lowe has long since joined the theatre of the absurd and is best ignored. I particularly enjoyed him mistaking a team of charity rowers for migrants off the coast of Great Yarmouth. To extend the analogy, he will sink his own boat sooner than later. Leave him to it and enjoy the comedy.
Although it can be hurtful when people react like this ‘honourable gent’ in reality what he says doesn’t seem worth listening to so why take notice of his personal comments. I feel that these people are dangerous because people follow them blindly and don’t think things through. Add this to the modern news outlets that are created by algorithms and AI we are living in worrying times. Independent media like Nation.Cymru is important but I wonder if it’s only read by people who go out of their way to find independent news so most of the sheep who blindly follow… Read more »
Agreed. Sometimes though independent minded people like ourselves need to be aware of the evil and the uprising it causes and to prepare ourselves.
If I read the article correctly, Lowe’s supposed crime is to express an opinion on Welsh politics, which seems little worse than people on this forum commenting on Trump, Le Pen or AfD. All the genuine nastiness came from other X users.
I have never had an X account and have no interest in the nonsense that is posted on there. Perhaps Ben should stop confusing X with real life and, if he doesn’t like what goes on Twitterland, delete his account and live in peace.
I too do not have a twitter account (I don’t even use facebook) but it is referred to all of the time by the media. I would imagine that if your news and opinions via X then it does affect you view on things and if that happens to enough people it affects the way they vote and so does become real life.
That is a fair point. I have no opinion on Great Yarmouth; but if I had one I would be entitled to it.
It’s not like passing comment on politicians or parties. It’s like saying Canada should become the 51st state. And that, frankly, would be none of yours business.
No, he is an MP in a body that could abolish the Senedd and has indicated he wants to do that. That’s clearly different from you or I ‘having an opinion’.
He is an independent backbench MP. He has no more power to abolish the Senedd than you or I. He is entitled to his opinion, and entitled to express it.
Correct (and Ben wrong). Farage clearly sees the Senedd election as a very useful platform. I suppose things could change if Reform won the next general election; but Mr Lowe very probably won’t be there to bother anyone. The immediate worry is the impact of what now appears to be the inevitable large Reform group in the Senedd next year. The institution could rot from within before other loons get the chance to opine.
Ben, If he has as much power as you suggest, don’t you think it is even more important that we all know what his opinion is?
We know it already, its the same right-wing nonsense I have heard for half a century. I don’t need to listen to it anymore; it teaches me nothing apart from confirming the nature of the sado-masochistic deviants of low intelligence who compose the right of politics in all democracies.