Farage's outrider on the further right

Restore highlights the call for Trump-style "mass deportations"

The labour movement and anti-racist movement need to wake up to the threat of Rupert Lowe and his party, Restore Britain. This may seem strange to say about a party founded in March 2026 which has only one MP and got less than 7% in the recent Makerfield by election. But read on.

There is much that is depressingly familiar in Restore Britain's politics for anyone who has been keeping an eye with the British far right over the decades. It’s the politics of ethno-nationalism, of “rights for whites”, of mass deportation of migrants, of bringing back the death penalty, bans on burqas, outlawing kosher and halal meat, and general “anti woke” culture-war posturing. Restore Britain takes live social and political issues from the news and tries to find a way to racialise them or blame migrants.

They are increasingly pushing the policy of “remigration” of millions of non-white people, regardless of their status, to restore what they see as the ethnic homogeneity of Britain. Recent posts on Facebook and Twitter by Rupert Lowe have talked of “colonisation” by migrant communities and “demographic vandalism”. This is the rhetoric of Enoch Powell reheated with a particular post-9/11 Islamophobic twist.

These politics are familiar, but their reach and potential influence are new. The BNP at its height, around 2007-8, had maybe 15,000 members. The latest figures released by Restore Britain claim 130,000 members.

Maybe membership of Restore Britain, often online, means less in reality than being a BNP member did back in the day (usually meaning some in-person link), but undeniably there is a large following for Restore Britain and Rupert Lowe on social media. Lowe has 1.4 million followers on Facebook and 880,000 on Twitter. Interviews with Lowe on YouTube often get multiple million views.

While Lowe does not have the open door Reform has to some parts of the more traditional right wing media, he is on channels like GB News and Talk TV relatively regularly.

Lowe's political origins outside the far right and generally affable and posh demeanour give him a respectability and access to platforms Nick Griffin could never dream of. The no platform approach that UAF used against Nick Griffin was not particularly effective, but Lowe has long escaped containment by any such policy.

Rupert Lowe's background and political trajectory is quite similar to that of his great rival on the far right, Nigel Farage.

Lowe was privately educated, worked in the City in the 1980s, and was a Thatcherite Tory who split with them to go into single issue Eurosceptic politics in the 1990s. After a failed run as a Referendum party candidate he dropped out of politics for nearly 30 years, becoming known as a multi-millionaire businessman and a much-hated owner of Southampton FC.

Farage brought him back into the political front line to stand first for the Brexit Party and then Reform. Lowe won the deprived coastal seat of Great Yarmouth for Reform in the 2024 General Election.

After the election Lowe quickly fell out with Farage. Lowe was open to working with the likes of Tommy Robinson and other more violent and street-based far right figures that Farage has studiously has kept his distance from. He was vocal against other senior Reform figures, especially Zia Yusuf. He was publicly manoeuvring for the leadership of Reform. Eventually Reform stripped Lowe of the whip for bullying behaviour.

Since then Lowe has gained the support of Elon Musk and many others on the right who think Farage is too soft and not right-wing enough.

Lowe also seems also to have moved rightward. As Hope Not Hate reports, some of Lowe's key lieutenants like Charlie Downes and Harrison Pitt have spoken at anti-immigration demos, were early promoters of “re-migration”, and are part of the far right podcaster universe.

Neo Nazis and fascists from the likes of Patriotic Alternative and the Homeland party have flocked to Restore Britain while maintaining their membership of those more extreme groups. There is no sign so far of Lowe repudiating them. In fact Lowe seems to be embracing some of their rhetoric and politics.

It’s unlikely that Restore will get very far electorally while Reform still dominate the far right, but they have already managed to push Reform rightwards by creating a new threat on its right flank. Nigel Farage had said mass deportations was fantasy politics, and Reform generally avoided talking openly about race and instead focused on identity and civic nationalism.

Under pressure from Restore, Reform has adopted a mass deportation policy and has started talking about police discrimination against “whites”. Even that hasn’t stopped Reforn losing a string of councillors or activists through defection to Restore Britain.

Lowe seems to be using his parliamentary seat more effectively than Farage. For instance, he used it to give his “report” on grooming gangs a quasi parliamentary sheen. He has used EDMs, questions to ministers, and his place on the Public Accounts Committee (which the Tory party shamefully gave him) as a platform for clippable moments.

Lowe and Restore Britain have helped emboldened a more openly racist and far-right political discourse, especially on social media. Lowe often says he doesn’t care if what he says is perceived as racist. That gives licence to more open racism from his supporters.

Restore Britain is still primarily electoral, but open to getting involved in street demos, with its flags appearing prominently on many demos and its activists speaking from the platforms. Lowe supported and promoted the "Unite The Kingdom" demos and the "Raise the Colours" campaign of putting Union Flags and St George's Crosses up everywhere.

We shouldn’t overplay Restore Britain's prospects. 7% at the Makerfield by election is no better then the BNP got in the constituency back in 2010. Other than Lowe, it has no other figures with any real public profile.

For all its posture as radical outsiders and Lowe's nose for seizing on populist talking points, economically Restore Britain offers the exact same ultra-Thatcherism as Reform and the Tories. This may limit their appeal to voters who are desperate for economic change. It is also a potential cleavage in the party, as the far right movements Lowe has welcomed into the party have more populist and corporatist economic views than he has.

Restore Britain clearly has money but it has very little national infrastructure, and where branches are forming, they are often going to be dominated by existing far-right figures. People whose history of petty factionalism and grudges, long criminal records, embarrassing neo-Nazi social media posts and inability to organise piss-ups in breweries will take its toll.

However, Farage and Reform are struggling. If they are overtaken by The tories and seriously lose momentum, Restore Britain may be well placed to make some gains electorally beyond their Great Yarmouth redoubt. Every Restore councillor elected will embolden local racists and bigots and make life harder for migrants, racialised minorities, and LGBTQ people.

The left, trade unionists and anti racists need to recognise the threat of Restore Britain alongside the continued threat of Reform, organise and mobilise against them where they stand, expose their politics and offer a socialist alternative to the despair and disillusion they exploit.