Rupert Lowe (on the far right) used to be in Farage’s party (Pic: Wikimedia commons)
Nigel Farage’s far right party Reform UK is under pressure after last week’s by-election in Manchester.
Reform UK finished second—and a distant second—to Labour.
But Farage isn’t only troubled by his failure to challenge Labour. He also faces a threat from the right.
Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain, which openly welcomes fascists, convinced nearly 50,000 people to vote for the party. And since then, Lowe has come out swinging.
In a video posted on Sunday, Lowe pitched a unity appeal to Farage. In reality, it was aimed at Reform UK supporters, in an attempt to radicalise them further to the right.
In it, he pointed to five principles for Reform UK and Restore Britain to come together around.
These included, “Restoring Britain’s borders, demographic security, the death penalty, self-sufficiency and the country’s faith in politics”.
In reality, it’s nothing more than austerity and reaction, wrapped up in racism.
It’s also the same set of “policies” he laid out when he first set up Restore.
Lowe started Restore as a pressure group within Reform UK and the Tories in June 2025.
Earlier, in March 2025, Lowe had been suspended from Nigel Farage’s far right party following accusations of bullying and threats of violence.
In reality, Reform UK was eager to distance itself from Lowe, who was close to outright fascist Tommy Robinson.
But it’s not only Robinson he’s close to. He’s since thrown his support behind the racist “Pink Ladies” and “Raise the Colours” campaigns.
A number of Nazis, including figures such as Callum Barker and Steve Laws, have now been revealed to be members of Restore Britain.
Once he was expelled from Reform UK, Lowe set up Restore as an independent political party in February 2026.
Within days of setting the party up, he claimed 50,000 people had joined.
He’s since claimed that the party has 130,000 members, with branches meeting regularly across Britain.
With the ability to attract 50,000 votes, Restore Britain is clearly a threat.
When Lowe launched the party, he promised, “Restore will not just stop mass immigration. We will reverse it. For the foreseeable future, far more people must leave Britain than arrive.”
Lowe had in his sights anyone he doesn’t consider British.
“If a foreign national is unable to speak English, lives in social housing, claims benefits, refuses to work, fails to integrate, commits crime or even actively hates our way of life and wishes to do us harm, they must leave. Or be made to leave.”
But it is Islamophobia that is at the heart of his racism.
He promised that Restore would be committed to “resisting the relentless creep of radical Islam, banning the burka, outlawing sharia law, blocking cousin marriages and halal slaughter.”
And he’s since funded an “independent inquiry” into child sexual abuse, weaponising violence against women and girls to push Islamophobia.
Restore has also published a number of “policy papers”.
The longest of these is one titled “Mass deportations—Legitimacy, legality and logistics.”
At its core is a “two-pronged approach—voluntary departures reaching around half a million or more per year driven by a hostile environment, and between 150,000-200,000 enforced removals per year”.
This is central to the appeal he is now pitching to Reform UK supporters who, after setbacks for Farage’s far right party, might be looking for answers even further to the right.
Shamefully, Labour, under Andy Burnham, is doing nothing to stop the rightward shift in British politics.
In fact, he is continuing Keir Starmer’s strategy of conceding to the right.
On Sunday, Burnham pledged that his government would be “relentless” in stopping people arriving in Britain on small boats.
He has kept Shabana Mahmood as home secretary. She has imitated the language and policies of the far right on immigration.
But attempting to “out-Reform” Reform UK only further legitimises racism and fuels the rise of the far right.
Racism first developed as a justification for enslavement
