Via the Press Association:
A Metropolitan Police spokesman said on Friday: “On Thursday 6 March we received an allegation of verbal threats made by a 67-year-old man on Friday 13 December.
“Officers are carrying out an assessment of the allegations to determine what further action may be required.”
As is widely known, the “67-year-old man” is Rupert Lowe MP, and the complainant is Zia Yusuf, the Chairman of his party, Reform UK. A few days ago, Yusuf and the party’s chief whip Lee Anderson MP issued a “Statement from Reform UK” claiming that “Mr Lowe has on occasions made threats of physcial violence against our Party Chairman. Accordingly, this matter is with the Police”.
The Yusuf/Anderson statement did not explain or even acknowledge the long delay between the alleged incidents and the police complaint, which was made the day after Lowe gave an interview to the Daily Mail in which he criticised party leader Nigel Farage as “messianic” and warned that “I’m not going to be by Nigel’s side at the next election unless we have a proper plan to change the way we govern from top to bottom.” The article also referred to Elon Musk’s stated preference for Lowe over Farage.
Perhaps Yusuf had wanted to make a complaint all along but had been holding back, but it seems more reasonable to suppose that the decision to involve police at just this moment is tactical: the existence of a police complaint lends an air of substance and seriousness to an allegation even where evidence is thin or non-existent.
Farage, meanwhile, notably fails to refer to the matter in his own statement on Lowe, which has been published in the Sunday Telegraph. Perhaps he thinks it’s a bit much: back in 2016 when he was leader of UKIP he famously described one of his MEPs punching a colleague as “one of those things that happens between men”, adding that “I don’t see any need for the police to be involved” despite the victim having been hospitalised with a (temporary) brain injury.
On the other hand, though, Farage did raise the possibility of police involvement last year when alleging that a vetting company had been deliberately negligent in weeding out unsuitable election candidates: “Lawyers have been instructed. We do not rule out police action”, he declared. The matter then disappeared from view (1), although it is unknown whether he dropped the matter or if the police themselves “ruled out” taking action.
Note
1. Another matter from the same period that has disappeared from view is Farage’s claim that Andrew Parker, a Reform activist filmed making racist comments, had been planted by Channel 4 (discussed here). Weak evidence collapsed under scrutiny, after which it was announced via Paul Staines that an unnamed “senior barrister” was investigating the claim on behalf of a group called “Ofcom Watch”. It is reasonable to suspect here a contrivance by which Reform UK could “move on” while not appearing to back down.
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