The British far right has spent the past decade talking about “Uniting the Right” while doing almost everything possible to avoid it.
From the wreckage of the BNP through the serial reinventions of UKIP and the endless splintering of various fascist micro‑parties, the movement has been defined less by ideological coherence than by personal fiefdoms, mutual loathing and the need for each leader to keep their own revenue stream flowing.
Against that backdrop, Rupert Lowe’s announcement of a new party, Restore UK, inevitably prompts the question: is this finally the long‑promised realignment, or just another reshuffle of the same exhausted deck?
‘Millions will go’
Lowe, a former Brexit Party MEP and one‑time Southampton FC chairman, has positioned Restore UK as a vehicle for “taking back control” from what he casts as a failed political class.
But more to the point, at his launch event in Great Yarmouth he pledged “mass deportations”, telling supporters that “millions will have to go” as part of his immigration platform.
That pitch is hardly novel, and is a sentiment shared by pretty much every party on the hard right, but what has made the launch notable was the speed with which figures from the even harder, explicitly fascist end of the spectrum rushed to declare their support, even if that support had been predictable for some time.
Hitler apologetics
Among the first to cheer the new party were Steve Laws, a perennial online migrant‑hater with a long record of fraternising with neo‑Nazis (as recently as two weeks ago at the Patriotic Alternative demonstration in Warwick) and the so‑called Zoomer Historian, Sam Wilkes, whose online output is a steady stream of Hitler apologetics dressed up as contrarianism. Their enthusiasm is not the sort of endorsement most new parties would welcome.
The problem is that, for many Rupert Lowe does actually represent the ‘ethno-nat’ current on the far right. Mark Collett of Patriotic Alternative has actively encouraged those who want to be involved in electoral politics to join Restore:
“If you want to be involved in electoral politics, the only party to join is Restore, and the only man to follow is Rupert Lowe. He is the only man in parliament that has stated that having a British passport doesn’t make you British.
“He is openly stating that there is an ethnic component to being British, and that having a piece of paper rubber stamped by the state is doesn’t change who you are. To have a party led by an MP that is openly espousing an ethno-nationalist position is a reason to celebrate”.
Such support presents Lowe with his first and most immediate problem. He has previously criticised Nigel Farage for vetting Reform UK applicants for earlier online transgressions, but the alternative is to allow the Hitler‑curious to flood in and become the public face of his new project.
If Restore UK is to be anything more than another short‑lived protest vehicle, Lowe will have to decide whether he is prepared to purge the very people who have been quickest to embrace him.
If he does nothing, he risks the embarrassment of candidates and activists whose social media histories will detonate on contact with daylight. If he does act, he will alienate the very online networks currently amplifying his launch.
Hitler edgelords
That dilemma has been highlighted by the Homeland Party-adjacent, far-right policy-wonk Pete North who wrote that:
“There are normies whose views on immigration are quite robust who can easily be sold on the notion that millions must leave, but they won’t rub shoulders with holocaust deniers and edgelords who praise Hitler, and they won’t vote for a party whose basic sentiment is that all brown people must be deported regardless of their family background.
“These are the people who will shit the bed for Restore just as they did with Homeland”.
This is a direct reference to the likes of Laws and Wilkes, and the Essex hotel protest organiser Callum Barker, who left Homeland last year because its remigration policy wasn’t hard enough.
The second complication is the supposed merger with Advance UK. Ben Habib, the former Brexit Party MEP who has spent the past year trying to turn Advance into a viable anti‑immigration party, declared himself “utterly delighted” at the launch of Restore and announced that he would merge his organisation into Lowe’s party.
The Advance UK ‘college’ which runs the show will meet in the coming months to work out the terms of such a merger.
But this may be wishful thinking. Not only did Lowe give Habib no advance warning of his launch, but his line since has only been that Habib and Advance members are welcome to join as individuals, in the same way as members of Reform or the Conservative Party.
He has conspicuously failed to reciprocate Habib’s offer of a merger, which would, in normal circumstances bring with it a leadership role of some sort for Habib.
This is a polite way of saying that Habib, if he does not want to split the vote, will have to liquidate his party, hand over its membership and organisational assets and accept a subordinate role, if any at all.
That is not the merger of equals Habib has in mind.
That has not been lost on Advance supporters who are complaining bitterly online about Lowe’s attitude.
Some of Lowe’s supporters do not want Habib involved at all, and for some it would not even be enough to keep Habib out of the tent. As far as Steve Laws is concerned, the Advance leader should be deported.
Unsurprisingly, not everyone in the Advance orbit is taking this well. Tommy Robinson has expressed enthusiasm for Restore, as have the riot inciter-in-chief and scourge of French seagulls, Danny Tommo and Robinson’s messenger boy Liam Tufts.
But one of Robinson’s key organisers in recent years, Richard Inman, launched a blistering online attack on Lowe as soon as he heard of the Restore launch:
“Rupert Lowe is a man driven not by love of country, but by a massive ego. He is hypocritical.
“He is treacherous in the way that he’s dealt with Ben Habib…I believe there’s a reason why Rupert Lowe will not join forces with Ben, and I think they’re very sinister.
“I believe the people round him, many of them are ethno-nats, and no matter what happens I’m going to stick with Advance UK.
“Well done, Rupert, you probably just destroyed any chance of saving the country, you treasonous wretch.”
Wider unease
Inman’s intervention matters because it may reflect a wider unease among Advance supporters who feel they are being asked to dissolve themselves into a project they neither control nor trust.
The leader of the far-right Heritage Party, David Kurten, actually summed it all up rather well:
“Nigel hates Ben. Ben hates Nigel. Nigel hates Rupert. Rupert hates Nigel. Ben loves Rupert. Rupert’s fans would deport Ben”.
Jangling nerves
Beyond Advance, the launch of Restore UK has set nerves jangling across the fragmented far‑right landscape. Britain First, which has spent years trying to ‘professionalise’ its image while retaining its street‑fighting base, will worry that some of its more politically-minded members may drift towards a party that promises electoral relevance.
The British Democrats, who have been trying to position themselves as the respectable home for racial nationalists, will fear a similar leakage. So far, they have maintained complete silence about the Restore launch.
Jeopardy
But the group most obviously in jeopardy is UKIP. Once a national force, it is now a hollowed‑out shell kept alive by stunts, conspiracy‑mongering and the occasional (streamed) boat trip across the channel to shout abuse at foreigners.
Restore UK offers a dwindling band of disillusioned Kippers a fresh banner to march under, and the party’s leader Nick Tenconi and Chairman Ben Walker know it.
The question, then, is whether Restore UK represents a genuine realignment or simply the latest in a long line of false dawns. The far right has been overpopulated with parties for years, but none has had the gravitational pull to force the others into line.
Bitter rivalries
Every attempt at unity has collapsed on contact with reality, usually because the leaders involved depend on their micro‑parties for income, status and control. The personal rivalries are bitter, the egos enormous, and the ideological differences often wider than they appear from the outside.
Lowe is attempting something that has defeated every far‑right entrepreneur before him: to create a party broad enough to attract Reform‑curious voters while also absorbing the harder elements without being defined by them.
That balancing act has undone many before him. If he clamps down on the neo‑Nazis, he risks losing the online energy that has greeted his launch and inaugurating a bout of destructive internal in-fighting. If he tolerates them, he will be toxic to many of the very voters he claims to want.
Musical chairs
For now, Restore UK looks less like a realignment and more like the opening move in yet another round of far‑right musical chairs. But the fact that Lowe has attracted attention from across the spectrum reflects the fact that on the far right, the appetite for consolidation is real, even if the path to achieving it remains strewn with the usual obstacles.
Whether Restore becomes the nucleus of a new formation or just another footnote will depend on how ruthlessly Lowe is prepared to manage his new supporters and how willing the other players are to swallow their pride.
