The far right’s much-hoped-for populist right realignment, meant to fuse Ben Habib’s Advance UK and Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain, has turned into the car crash we predicted.
Lowe had already failed conspicuously to respond to Habib’s offer of a merger when, on 5 March in a leaked voice note, Habib fired off both barrels. .
He claimed Restore Britain has “gone full tilt racist”, an allegation that shook up the far-right ecosystem.
You can hear it here:
Restore Britain retaliated with a troll tweet on X: “Go full tilt for Restore Britain. Join the party today,” with an image of Lowe clad in a Barbour jacket standing in front of a Union Jack and St George’s flag.
After the leak, Habib went on an alt-right media offensive, looking to drive home the accusation that Restore Britain was becoming “ethno-nationalist” and “deeply dangerous.”
Appearing on Dan Wootton’s ‘Outspoken’ You Tube Channel, Habib warned that Restore Britain’s obsession with “English ethnicity” would unleash “really quite despicable, violent voices”.
Habib often shares with interviewers that his mother was white and blonde, but he says that some within Restore Britain were nonetheless uncomfortable with his father’s Pakistani heritage, which could have influenced Lowe’s position.
‘They call me a Paki’
“It’s clear many in Restore don’t like me. They call me a ‘Paki’ and whatnot”, he said.
“This is a whole new revelation for me”, claimed Habib. “I thought the idea of white-sponsored racism against brown or Black people was just a myth, created by the left wing.
“I didn’t think it existed. I had some racism when I first came to the country in 1979 (to attend Rugby public school). I have had no racism against me until now. I just hope Rupert can get a grip on it”.
Cultural nationalist
Habib portrays himself as a “cultural nationalist” with the political nous to avoid the “dark road” of full-tilt white nationalism, but he might take his own advice and get a grip on leading members of Advance UK who don’t appear to have got the memo about the veneer of respectability.
For example, the party’s candidate for the recent Gorton and Denton by-election, Nick Buckley, is a self-confessed admirer of former BNP leader Nick Griffin, one of the UK’s leading fascists and Holocaust deniers.
Two weeks ago, Buckley, who hosts a YouTube podcast called Nick Talks, interviewed Griffin for the second time in two months, offering a cosy and even reverential platform for a man long associated with racism and fascist politics.
‘Lowe is our Trump‘
As the row rumbled on, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson, threw his support behind Rupert Lowe during his U.S. tour last week.
Robinson, who had previously supported Habib’s Advance UK to the point of announcing that he had actually joined up, told an interviewer, “Rupert Lowe is our Trump. Rupert Lowe is the only political figure who will save Britain.”
Treason and treachery
However, this appears to represent a split in Robinson’s circle. One of his right hand men, Richard Inman, and others in his Christian-nationalist, Islamophobic sphere, are virulently opposed to Lowe, accusing him of treason and treachery, and, like Habib, have denounced him for harbouring ethno-nationalist extreme racists.
Another Robinson lieutenant backing Habib is Don Keith, who is not just close to Robinson, but a member of Robinson’s Urban Scoop online team who frequently travels abroad with him.
He recently described Habib as “One of the kindest most conservative and patriotic BRITISH gentlemen I’ve met, (who) has been viciously attacked with racial slurs by hundreds of people claiming to be Restore Britain supporters simply because he leads Advance UK, a political party that’s in opposition to their political party”.
In an interview on the Keith’s Real Beef channel, Habib claimed that racism against him was one reason the merger between Advance UK and Restore Britain, a party he sought to help lead, failed.
Ambitious young men
Habib is blaming Restore Britain’s drift into racialized politics on Lowe’s young, social media-savvy entourage, naming, among others, Campaigns Director Charlie Downes.
Downes had a moment of fame in the mainstream consciousness when, earlier this month, he proved too much even for the far-right fellow travellers at GB News where he attempted to expound on his theories of “English ethnicity”.
What followed was a chaotic live debate in which he clashed with the fiery Black-British presenter Nana Akua. She began: “Do you think I am English? Downes flubbed, as Akua repeatedly asked him what Britishness is.
The influence of the Young Turks surrounding Lowe, aged 68, is being spotlighted by Restore Britain critics on the far right, who are concerned that Lowe’s breakaway party will split the Reform vote in a General Election.
Beyond their abilities
Homeland Party-adjacent, far-right policy-wonk Pete North wrote in his newsletter: “These are ambitious young men in a hurry to make their mark on the world, but they’ve very much bitten off more than they can chew.
“Turning a large register of interest into a functional organisation is beyond their abilities. That is not to say they are not capable chaps, but it’s no small task ahead of them. It simply cannot be done in two years”.
North echoed Nigel Forrester, of Pimlico journal (”Right-wing thought from the London Scene”), who tweeted: “I think they have gotten drunk from the opportunity their control (and I use that word deliberately) of Lowe has granted — and the illusion of power given by social media — and, frustrated by being locked out of influence within Reform, have launched a foolish project that they themselves will soon regret.
“Already, they are finding it difficult to manage the unrealistic expectations of many people online, who seem to assume that not just Lowe but the crowd around Restore endorse far more extreme positions than they actually do (or at least are willing to voice publicly).
“The disappointment as soon as (say) Downes is forced to deny on television that he wants ‘total remigration’ of all non-white people will be palpable”.
Digital rancour
After days of digital rancour and name-calling between Advance UK fans and Restore Britain supporters, Lowe, the independent MP for Great Yarmouth, was interviewed by the anonymous ‘Basil the Great’, a Restore Britain cheerleader on X with nearly 300,000 followers, on 11 March.
Lowe trotted out the deport illegal immigrants line, but when pressed about the “remigration” of millions of non-white British citizens, who “hadn’t done anything wrong but culturally clashed,” in Basil the Great’s words, Lowe ducked the question, distancing himself from the hardline racism of “remigration” and his own advisors.
He limited his response to rephrasing his position on mass deportations, rambling a bit about “tribal societies” and grooming gangs, and muttered a vague “we’ll see” before veering off into how AI would benefit blue-collar workers.
‘Wrong’uns’ and ‘extremists‘
However, as Searchlight previously reported, amongst Lowe’s earliest and most vociferous supporters were a faction of ‘ethno-nationalists’ – fascists and extreme racists who want to deport any and all non-whites – who had only last year broken away from the Homeland Party because it was too soft on race and immigration.
They include Steve Laws, Sam Wilkes (the ‘Zoomer Historian’) and Callum Barker, the Epping migrant hotel activist.
Laws has even said publicly that Habib should be deported.
Immediate problem
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.
Orla Minihane, Restore Britain’s Spokeswoman for the Safety of Women and Children, conceded that “wrong’uns” and “extremists” would infiltrate the new party, amid claims that 100,000 people want to join the party, on Wootton’s ‘Outspoken’ show.
“What we can do is make sure these extremists are never put forward as spokespeople, they are never put forward as councilors, and are never put forward as MPs”.
She conveniently omitted that she had been perfectly happy to share a platform with one of these “wrong’uns”, former Homeland Party activist Callum Barker, at a rally protesting against the Bell Hotel in Epping being used to house migrants.
Dilemma
That dilemma was highlighted by 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”.
