Reform, Restore, Rehash?

On Friday, Rupert Lowe, the independent Member of Parliament formerly of Reform UK, launched his own political party named Restore Britain. At the time of writing, the announcement video has amassed upwards of 30 million views on X, with many of the Western world’s most popular right-wing social media accounts — from Raw Egg Nationalist to Wall Street Mav — cheering him on. 

Critics of Lowe argue that few outside of the culture war circles on X have heard of him, but these claims don’t track — Lowe has over 250,000 followers more on Facebook than he does on X, and has stated that he reaches “far more people on Facebook than X”. Still, while Lowe’s popularity has dramatically increased in the short year-and-a-half following his election to Parliament, he does not carry the same name recognition as Nigel Farage, let alone the latter’s proven experience of winning elections, as recent Reform victories have demonstrated, and contentious campaigns, being a key figure in the pro-Brexit campaign. 

Restore Britain has the potential to be both very positive and hugely detrimental to Britain’s political future. Lowe’s announcement video was a masterclass in giving his admirers exactly what they want: decisive language promising a rebirth of a pre-Blair Britain, with fewer foreign nationals, fewer people on benefits, and more money to go round. The sober nature of the message was appealing — Lowe made it clear that the challenge facing the party, and the country, is not an easy one, but nor is it insurmountable. With stronger language than we have heard from Reform, Lowe promised to remove all people who arrived in Britain illegally, along with legal foreign nationals who do not meaningfully contribute to society.

Policy proposals like this — from a brand-new party with very little in the way of a party infrastructure as yet — do not have to be fully fleshed out to grab hold of the public imagination. What is likely is that it pushes the Overton window even farther rightward, and we begin hearing traditional centre-right figures like Kemi Badenoch (as she is centre-right in the political landscape of 2026) parroting some of the same points. With much of the online right rallying behind Lowe, we may begin to see a surge in the early stages of the posting to policy pipeline, whereby anonymous meme accounts — the modern politician’s crowdsourced spin doctor — churns out a large volume of pro-Lowe content, driving the narrative as others strive to keep up. 

Lowe’s party may inadvertently help Reform, though, this by helping solve one of the main problems it has faced: attracting too many nutcases. Restore is positioning itself further to the right than Reform — and while this is no bad thing in and of itself, it will likely mean that those who believe in the most extreme solutions see Restore as the closest party to what they believe. 

Another danger of this development is one that we in Northern Ireland are all too aware of: splitting the right wing vote. There are currently a great deal of small right-wing political parties knocking about: Restore Britain, Ben Habib’s Advance UK and the Social Democratic Party, among other, smaller factions. These parties will likely intend to field candidates in many, if not all, of the seats that Reform and the Conservative Party will attempt to win. The worst case scenario in this very busy playing field is that votes are split across these parties in marginal seats that other parties — Labour, the Liberal Democrats, or, God forbid, the Greens — end up winning. 

While it is unthinkable that any of these parties would command an overall majority in Parliament in even the worst case scenario, we could reasonably end up with a hung Parliament and some unworkable coalition if votes are split. Such an outcome is the norm in Northern Ireland — where, as the reader will be aware, very little that can be construed as progress in any direction can be accomplished.

I welcome the added competition from Restore Britain

Another troubling outcome, which is arguably more likely, would be an electoral pact between Reform and the Conservative Party, where choices would be made to tactically refrain from fielding candidates in certain seats in order not to split the vote. Zia Yusuf has admitted that his party would be open to considering such an outcome, adding to worries that Reform may be becoming little more than the Conservative Party 2.0. 

I do not believe that such catastrophic outcomes are the most likely. Indeed, I welcome the added competition from Restore Britain. It has long been a criticism of Farage that what he says in public comes across as too vague, and voters may be won by Lowe’s refusal to do the same. But read between the lines and it becomes clear that Farage is simply playing by the book that the left-wing blob has written — ensuring his party has the best chance at remaining credible, batting away accusations that they could go too far. With the addition of Restore, vocal restrictionist and patriotic speech is likely to become even more common and, importantly, normalised. Expect what has always long been inferred to be no longer said under one’s breath.