In the 2024 general election, Reform UK managed to win five parliamentary seats on 14.3% of the national vote. The far right were, on the whole, less than pleased with that seat distribution. Reform’s arc of thought was then represented by their five MPs—Farage, Tice, Lowe, Anderson, and McMurdock—who had converged at various points along the UKIP-Brexit-Reform route.
This caused quite some chafing; each one was well-placed to expand their control over the party’s image by positioning themselves further to the right than their peers. And the appetite among the anti-immigrant racist right was—and is—strong, as can be seen in the annual pogroms, surrounding of asylum hotels, and flag-hoisting.
In January 2025, Elon Musk called on Nigel Farage to resign as leader of Reform and endorsed Rupert Lowe for leader in a spat apparently stemming from Musk’s support for fascist rabble rouser Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson. Farage tactically disagreed with Musk’s manic support for Robinson, leading to the collapse of talks about large donations to the party.
Although Lowe affirmed his loyalty to the boss, this apparently was enough of a threat to Farage’s position that Lowe was suspended in March 2025. This was officially due to allegations of physical threats from Lowe towards party chair Zia Yusuf, and workplace bullying towards two female employees in his offices.
So, what now was Lowe to do? His job had just become tenuous, sitting as an independent MP. But by steering further right, he could survive the next election and influence Reform’s politics. Lowe’s answer then was Restore Britain: first as a pressure group, then becoming a formal party in time for the recent local elections.
And pressure them it has! Any position Reform takes, Restore takes its shadow; a darker image of the same general shape. On immigration, Reform campaigns on the mass deportation of illegal migrants, scrapping indefinite leave to remain, and building a ‘fully integrated border command’. Restore says much the same, but with the additional ‘Great Replacement’ dog whistle: ‘Mass immigration has been a disaster for Britain… By 2030 native British births will account for fewer than 50% of total births in Britain. By 2070, native Brits will be an absolute minority.’
While Reform is happy to keep its complaints about ‘family voting’ (a thinly veiled and unsubstantiated complaint about Muslims’ voting patterns) during the Gorton and Denton by-election to simple rhetoric and complaints in the news, Restore puts out a policy proposal: ‘End Political Islam and Other Forms of Ethnoreligious Bloc Voting.’
To the racists the meaning is clear, and the unspoken call to action even clearer. No statement is made to say that ‘native’ births falling below than 50% of total births would be a bad thing; it is merely a statistical ‘fact’.
But every racist who reads it understands what is said, yet unsaid: your race is under attack; the decline you have seen is not because of capitalism, but the impoverished migrant who steals your jobs, your taxes, your women! Where Reform flirts with racism and conspiracy, Restore warmly and openly embraces it.
At the Makerfield by-election, which saw Restore come third behind Labour’s Andy Burnham and Reform’s Robert Kenyon, a group of self-admitted Restore supporters chased the Reform election bus in a van with ‘Muslims for Reform’ painted on the side. While this was disavowed on twitter by Lowe, it makes clear the composition of Restore’s support. It comes from the furthest of far right, eating into the support of niche hard-right street groupings—those who might think that Reform is compromised for its inclusion of Muslim members.
Restore has also attracted support from several fascist leaders. According to Hope not Hate, officials from the British Democratic Party, BNP, For Britain, and the leadership of Patriotic Alternative have all supported the new Restore movement. Whether or not this endorsement is accepted by Lowe, the fact remains: further right than Reform is after all his core of support.
The fascist right will organise behind Lowe and Restore, and Lowe will keep getting juicy donations, so long as he keeps momentum rightward. Lowe is happy to do so. And so, a street movement grows from this absorbed fascist tradition. They will not become tame parliamentary voters; they will be the brick-throwers and building-burners who inflict violence upon non-white people they see in the street.
Restore moves wherever it can outflank from the right; it gives parliamentary legitimacy to the roving bands of racist terror-mongers on the street. It brings together the worst of the global online right’s political thought, from Trump, Musk, and Vance to Karl Benjamin and Tommy Robinson, and wraps them in an electoral sheen.
From the ballot to the streets
The real danger posed by Restore Britain is that it could become the convenient political home for Tommy Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom movement and the assortment of fascists that form its core.
Robinson has long discarded the idea of forming or joining an overtly fascist party, whose antisemitism and Nazi-worship were seen as too outdated and not British enough to succeed. He abandoned the English Defence League and the short lived Football Lads Alliance precisely because they became too closely identified with fascism.
This is not to say that Robinson has left his fascist days behind; he was after all a member of the British National Party in the 2000s. On the contrary he realised that Islamophobia was the new antisemitism (hence the invention of Christian nationalism), and that migration (and the plebian ‘solution’ of remigration) was the cause for a new counter-revolutionary street movement. Therefore the plethora of far right grouplets – Britain First, Patriotic Alternative, Homeland, UKIP, etc.—would not suffice for his project.
Robinson first tried to force Reform to support his movement, but Nigel Farage publicly rebuffed Robinson, preferring only to give dog-whistles in the direction of the pogromists. The would-be fascist leader then turned to Ben Habib’s Advance UK party but, perhaps because of Habib’s racial profile, this proved short-lived. After a lash-up between Habib and Rupert Lowe fell through, Restore Britain was launched.
Unlike Farage, Lowe has said Robinson is ‘welcome’ to join Restore. Musk too has given Lowe his backing. So does this make Restore a fascist party in the making?
It is too early to pin this label on Restore. For a start its modest 7% vote is roughly the same as the BNP’s vote in Makerfield in 2010, albeit in a far more contested election where Labour and Reform squeezed the votes for other parties. It is yet to be seen if Restore could build on that.
Secondly it is questionable whether Lowe would continue to ‘welcome’ Robinson and co. if and when the flames of fascist mob violence explode on a wider scale. If such a close alliance threatens to damage the party’s electoral chances, Lowe could try an about-face.
One thing is certain though: that Restore is a party that allows fascists to freely organise within its ranks and gives support to its outrages. As Hitler warned in 1928: ‘Only one danger could have jeopardized this development [of the Nazi party]—if our adversaries had understood its principle… if they had from the first day annihilated with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement.’
This is the lesson we must learn now. We must treat Restore like we treat any overtly fascist party: no platform, no marches, no electioneering. Crush Lowe and the maggots in his ranks by any means necessary!
