Conservative London Assembly member Susan Hall has repeatedly expressed support for suspended Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe on her X social media feed, including by endorsing defences of Lowe by individuals with hardline nationalist and right-wing populist views.
Hall, who was defeated by Sir Sadiq Khan in last May’s election for Mayor of London, has also used her X feed to sympathise with criticism of the Mayor for saying he anticipates British people exercising “their freedom of speech and freedom of protest” should Donald Trump make a second state visit to the UK.
Lowe, who represents the Great Yarmouth constituency, is being investigated by the Metropolitan Police over alleged “verbal threats” of physical violence towards Reform’s chairman, Zia Yusuf. Lowe has denied the allegations, along with related claims about his conduct that saw him lose the Reform party whip in parliament last week.
Hall, who is also a Tory councillor in Harrow, appears to have taken Lowe’s side in an open row between him and Reform leader Nigel Farage that preceded the disciplinary and police action, posting several times in support of him despite Reform being a rival right-wing party.
Earlier this week, responding to a rebuttal by Lowe on X of the alleged reasons for his party’s disciplinary action against him, Hall asked, “Why is there a desire to remove” him from Reform, adding: “Looks like it’s a stupid thing to do to say the least!”
Also on X, Hall reacted to a political commentator saying that Lowe’s social media comments were rendering him politically irrelevant by remarking “in your eyes only” and tagging Lowe himself.
Last week on X, Hall came to Lowe’s defence after he was mocked as “poor little Rupert” and described as a political amateur by Isabel Oakeshott, who is “international editor” of the populist Right channel Talk TV and the partner of Farage’s deputy, Richard Tice.
Hall has also also reposted the opinion, posted on X, of former GB News presenter Dan Wootton that Lowe’s handling by Reform “is looking like an orchestrated witch hunt weaponising woke HR processes” to “discredit” Lowe.
Lowe is considered to be on the right wing of Reform, a populist Right party, which opinion polls suggest is attracting many Britons who voted Conservatives at last year’s general election.
A recent YouGov survey found that a third of such electors would vote Reform at a future general election, compared with just nine per cent of 2024 Labour voters and eight per cent of 2024 Liberal Democrat voters who said they would.
In February, Lowe defended the far-Right agitator Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself “Tommy Robinson” and is currently serving a prison sentence for contempt of court.
Elon Musk, owner of X and an adviser of Donald Trump, said in January he thought Farage “doesn’t have what it takes” to lead Reform and that Lowe’s online statements “make a lot of sense”. Also in January, Musk called for Yaxley-Lennon to be released from prison.
Earlier this month, Hall reposted a claim that Southport murderer Axel Rudakubana “probably was a Muslim terrorist” made by David Atherton, who describes himself as a journalist with the website The European Conservative, which says it “aims to give a voice to the growing national-populist revolt against the discredited political establishment across the European Union and the West”.
Atherton’s post reported that Lowe had written to the Ministry of Justice asking for a reduction in the sentences of those who broke the law by posting words on social media found to amount to threats of violence or targeted campaigns of harassment.
Cardiff-born Rudakubana’s family was Christian and the chief constable of Merseyside has told MPs that, following his atrocity, she had wanted to inform the media that he was not Muslim because she was seeing Muslim communities across the country being subjected to hate crime.
Counter terror police have said that Rudakubana’s failure to disclose a motive for his crime “means these acts have not met a legal definition of terrorism”.
Atherton, who has suggested today that Yaxley-Lennon has been demonised by “the Deep State”, has also been previously quote-posted by Hall after he argued there is an equivalence between Khan anticipating his fellow British people making their feelings known about President Trump if he pays a second state visit to the UK and those prosecuted for online hate crime. Hall expressed enthusiasm for a Trump visit.
Other recent X activity by Hall includes applauding shadow home secretary and London MP Chris Philp for his incorrect claim that 48 per cent of London’s social housing “is occupied by people who are foreign”. The 2021 Census found that although 48 per cent of London’s social housing is inhabited by people born outside the UK – as are 41 per cent of Londoners as a whole – only 14.7 per cent are not British citizens.
The City Hall Conservative group has been asked by On London if Hall’s fellow group members are comfortable with her expressing support for a politician of a rival party. No reply has yet been received.
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