18.06.2026

When they were all Reform UK: James McMurdock, Richard Tice, Nigel Farage and Robert Lowe

Politics of restoration

Challenging Reform UK from the right, Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain not only has open fascist support, it is finding a real resonance for its promise to reverse mass migration and hold a binding referendum on the death penalty, writes Eddie Ford

Restore Britain is very much a sign of the times. Set up by Rupert Lowe, it challenges Reform UK from the right. MP for Great Yarmouth and a multimillionaire, Lowe left Reform in March 2025 after publicly criticising Nigel Farage as a “messiah” and allegedly making threats of physical violence against Zia Yusuf, then party chair - who reported these ‘threats’ to the Metropolitan Police. The investigation was later dropped.

Needless to say, Lowe and Farage are bitter rivals with different political perspectives, fighting for the crown of who is the biggest opponent of the status quo. For instance, Lowe advocates the large-scale deportation of people from the country without legal status, wants net-negative immigration, withdrawing public funding for the BBC, banning the burqa and niqab, stopping “wokery”, banning kosher and halal slaughter, abolishing inheritance tax, which is “evil”, ending hosepipe bans, and expanding the legal scope of “reasonable force” in defence of the home, as laid out in one of Restore’s policy papers, ‘Retaking the English castle: self-defence in an era of anarcho-tyranny’. Centrally, he calls for a binding referendum on restoring the death penalty, using PMQs late last year, for cases where “the evil” is “so irredeemable” (and “far too often perpetrated by someone who should not be in our country to begin with”).¹

Indeed, Restore wants to introduce “binding referendums on major national issues” - a model of “direct democracy in which citizens have a genuine say in the decisions that affect their lives”.² Of course, ruling by referendums was a favourite device of dictators like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, because its cuts across class consciousness and reduces people to atomised individuals (emulated, of course, by Jeremy Corbyn and Karie Murphy in Your Party). People are expected to vote on a simple ‘yes’/‘no’ question, carefully chosen by those above, who already know what the answer will be (hence the scorn directed against David Cameron by the British establishment for losing the Brexit referendum). Voters can normally be herded in the right direction by the wielders of “direct democracy”.

One important factor that seems to account for Rupert Lowe’s appeal is his agitation demanding a public inquiry into rape gangs - the perfect vehicle to spread more xenophobia. Keir Starmer later buckled to pressure on this demand and announced his £65 million inquiry … due to publish its findings and conclusions by April 2029. But Lowe’s own independent ‘Rape gang inquiry’ is available right now.³

According to a Restore spokesperson earlier this year, whilst Reform believes that anyone from anywhere can become British - just love the monarchy and the flag - Restore has a straightforward ethnonationalist definition. Britain is for a “people defined by indigenous British ancestry and Christian faith”. Lowe himself in a characteristic post on X has said that “countless foreign men from cultures and religions which treat women like shit are now roaming our streets whether they arrived legally or illegally”: Afghans, Somalians, Albanians, Sudanese, Pakistanis, Eritreans …. “they drink, they loiter, they spit, they intimidate, they harass” - savage hordes waiting to defile decent British folk.

Hammering home the message back in May, Reform’s video of Muslim mayoral candidate Laila Cunningham, walking around London with ethnic minority supporters, was pounced on by Restore supporters who posted comments on social media like ‘Is anyone still pretending Reform are against immigration?’

Unsurprisingly then, Restore Britain is increasingly attracting support from fascist groups, prominent members of which were seen campaigning on the streets of Makerfield for its candidate, Rebecca Shepherd.⁴ This is in sharp contrast to Reform, which tries to cold-shoulder extreme-right groups.⁵ Strangely, they are nearly always referred to as “neo-fascists”, while many of them are the real thing.

In fact, Lowe’s readiness to work with such types has accelerated his complete rift with Reform, with Farage putting a cordon sanitaire around Tommy Robinson, refusing to let him join the party. But Rupert Lowe takes a completely different approach, saying that, if Robinson wants to join Restore, “that’s up to him”, as he does not “audit our membership”.⁶ After all, as far as Lowe is concerned, Robinson “gets flak for being right about the rape gangs”, but Restore’s leader gives him “credit for it”, as he was “an early adopter of the view that it was happening”.

This endorsing of Robinson and implicitly of fascist groups has sparked a civil war amongst the rightwing press.⁷ The Mail on Sunday led the charge with its front page, “Restore activists at ‘White supremacy summit’,” - saying supporters canvassing for Lowe’s party had attended an event that hosted calls for “a white-only Europe”, and its editorial sternly declared that “anyone who really cares about Britain won’t vote Restore”. This was followed the next day by the Daily Mail getting excited about how “Restore is the ‘new home for neo-Nazis’”, citing Lowe’s statement that Tommy Robinson could join Restore if he wants to, with a Reform source apparently supplying the ‘killer’ quote used for the headline. In response, Lowe accuses Farage of being part of the political establishment.

It would be a profound mistake to regard Restore and Lowe as merely fringe or marginal, using as evidence that they are backed by organisations like the British National Party. Lowe points out that Restore has 130,000 paying members and “new branches jump up every day”, with over 800,000 followers on X, and 10 of his posts since February having received more than 10 million views. That is how Restore is “able to play the game”, as “we know how to use social media” - undoubtedly too he knows how to monetise outrage. But, even more importantly perhaps, he is enthusiastically supported by the world’s first trillionaire, Elon Musk, whom he calls a “free-speech hero” - bonding over their shared outrage over grooming gangs (who are always portrayed as being brown and Muslim, never white and Christian).