The BBC put some of these criticisms to the party’s chairman, Yusuf.
He said Reform UK under Farage had delivered “the greatest political acceleration in British history”, with “a fraction of the resources of the two old parties”.
Yusuf, who was appointed chairman after the general election last year, said the party had vetted thousands of people and “the majority have passed”.
But some don’t, he said, adding that “just comes with the territory of being a professional party”.
Reform UK’s vetting system, Yusuf said, was “meaningfully more rigorous than anything that the other parties do”.
“Of course, anything growing at this scale, there’ll be some teething issues,” he added.
The recent ructions do appear to have cut through to the voting public though.
One recent survey suggested, external that the party was split with a third of Reform voters believing the party would be faring better under a different leader, but the same amount believing that the party would be doing worse.
The survey also suggested that Farage’s net favourability with Reform voters had fallen since the Lowe row.
Yet the latest YouGov poll put Reform UK on 23% of the vote, behind Labour on 24% but ahead of the Conservatives on 22%.
Gawain Towler still believes in Farage’s leadership, despite being sacked as Reform UK’s head of press last year.
Towler said he had been to several branch meetings as a speaker recently and had witnessed very little dissent.
He said Reform UK won 4.1 million votes at last year’s general election “with a ramshackle operation and an army of volunteers who worked their socks off for no recompense whatsoever”.
“We need to get at least 10 million to win,” Towler said. “You’re not going to find six million votes to our right. You’d be mad to appease some screamy people on the outside of the party.”
For now, the party’s focus is trained on the upcoming local elections. It has high hopes in Lincolnshire where its candidate Andrea Jenkyns, a former Tory MP, is vying to be mayor.
Reform UK sources say internal private polling has left them optimistic about winning what would be its highest elected office to date.
But to become a serious contender to win a general election, Reform UK may have to get a firmer grip on its grassroots.
It may also have to convince members to back some of the messy compromises that other mainstream parties make to attract more voters.
