Nigel Farage survives this one, but only just. A four-point margin on 66 votes is a whisker away from a dead heat, and it leaves Reform's founding leader looking less untouchable than his party's poll ratings might suggest.
The real story is generational. Voters aged 35 to 54 broke decisively for Lowe, with the 35-44 bracket giving him 11 of 17 votes, but the 65+ cohort went 5 to 1 against him and the youngest voters leaned the same way. It is an odd shape for an insurgency-versus-incumbent question, with the challenger's strength sitting in mid-career voters rather than at either end.
Gender tells its own tale too, though the female sample is thin: 7 of 8 women who voted backed Lowe, against a near-even split among the 50 men. Whether that reflects views on Lowe's stance on grooming gangs, his combative style, or simply appetite for change inside a party still finding its institutional footing, the chamber's women here were markedly more sympathetic to the challenger than its men.
Farage's win, then, is a hold rather than a mandate, propped up by pensioners and the young while the party's working-age core drifts toward the man he pushed out.
2 Opinions
Rupert would be a cleaner leader by far, but vocalising ideas does not mean he would make for a better leader.
Both scumbags