𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

I hope you’re having an enjoyable summer and have managed to keep cool in the sweltering heat. I’ve just just got back from a family holiday in the South of France where wildfires have been raging across the parched landscape. Thankfully we were well away from those.

Mid-August is typically the quietest time of the year in Westminster, perfect for easing yourself back into the swing of things following a fortnight of slumber. Or so I thought.

I didn’t bargain on the wildfire engulfing Reform UK.

With Nigel Farage’s Clacton by-election out of the way I foolishly believed things would be all quiet on the Western Front.

The week kicked off with Robert Jenrick’s meaty welfare reforms, slashing £50billion from the benefits bill.

So far so good.

But late on Monday a new round of bloodletting erupted when Tim Montgomerie, who defected to Reform from the Tories two years ago, was suspended following his public criticism of Farage and the party’s home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf.

Farage was away, and did not know that Tom Waterhouse, Reform’s general secretary, and Lee Anderson, the party chairman, were going to suspend Montgomerie.

This decision came between the recording and broadcast of an interview Montgomerie gave to The Spectator.

In it, he rebuked Yusuf for acting like “a child” and slammed him for “intemperate” use of social media, and warned: “A lot of people are on not-speaking terms with Zia, and it’s nearly always Zia who initiates it. It needs to end.”

Once source told me this week that anger, which has been simmering since Robert Jenrick’s bombshell defection to Reform in January, is now coming to the boil.

Intense pressure over Farage’s donations have added to a volatile cocktail, they said.

“Until Jenrick it was a pretty happy ship, plain sailing. We were on the rise and it felt unstoppable.

“But tensions have been growing since then. Zia has always been hugely sceptical of Conservatives.

“He also doesn’t like being criticised in such a public manner. Then you have the donations stuff and it just creates a very volatile cocktail.”

Richard Tice warned party members to air their differences behind closed doors when he was confronted about the “civil war” during a press conference on Thursday.

“We’re a fast-growing political party,” he said. “There’ll be a range of views, and sometimes we’ll agree, and sometimes we’ll have a debate and discussion.

“That’s what you do in business. That’s what you do in a boardroom. That’s what you do when you’re brainstorming.

“But what we’ve always said is that actually, when you are when you’re having your discussions about those things, in the nicest possible way, as you would in a boardroom or in a brainstorming session in a company, you keep it behind closed doors, and then you go out and sell a great message.”

What it does do is beautifully set things up for Reform’s annual conference in a fortnight’s time.

I’ll have a ringside seat at Birmingham’s NEC for all the fun and games.

Until then, we have one more week of parliamentary recess to get through.

Au revoir!