All eyes on Makerfield

It’s all kicking off over on X. Reform and Restore activists are at each other’s throats, ripping chunks out of each other in fierce competition over the Makerfield by-election. For me it’s an entirely passive form of entertainment because any residual hope of either of them getting their act together evaporated some weeks ago.

Many lament this infighting but I think it’s healthy. It's good for democracy for all the parties to be exposing each other. Let no-one go into the next general election harbouring the misapprehension that any of them are good. This is especially true for this by-election in that neither party has been able to field a vaguely passable candidate. The Reform candidate is a sexist prick and the Restore candidate is dimmer than a ten watt black lightbulb with a coating of dust.

If we’re generous, we can give Restore some leeway, by way of being a new party. Personally I don’t think that holds. Rupert Lowe was convinced he could do the job better than Farage. That Reform, meanwhile, is still struggling to find passable candidates points to more serious problems in Farage’s organisation. At this point, Reform needs to win every by-election.

If Reform does lose, they’ll blame Restore for splitting the vote, but the bottom line is that they failed to find a high profile quality candidate who could beat Andy Burnham - and that’s on them alone. No party is entitled to a clear run at a seat, and there’s no reason why Lowe should cut Farage any slack.

In the grander scheme of things, I don’t think this by-election is anywhere as pivotal as some believe it is. For sure, Burnham is more popular than other Labour leadership contenders, but a few months in the job will soon strip the shine off him. Labour is a zombie party and leadership is only half the problem.

If anything, this by-election is a test of whether Restore has an interim future. It must tally at least four thousand votes to land as a serious competitor, otherwise it’s an also-ran fringe party. A nuisance to Farage, but not a show-stopper.

Regardless, I do not see a long term future for Restore. Restore won't get big enough to implode the way Reform will. At absolute best, it will win roughly the same reputational clout as Reform circa 2024, prior to the reanimation of Farage (maybe able to win in a handful of strongholds, and enough to cost Reform a handful of seats) and will then tread water until it fades out of view the way Ukip has. Reform, until it fails in office, is the de factor insurrection party. That isn’t going to change.

Being generous, Restore could poll a million votes at the general election, at which point it buys itself a great deal more exposure and media scrutiny, and will then run into all the same problems as Reform because there are no unifying values, no fixed ideology, and any attempt to firm up something like a working ideological platform will have its own activists fighting like rats in a sack. They will duck the question completely, and be all over the shop the same way Reform is now, to end up a rabble of contradictory cranks (and ambitious egotists).

Insofar as there'll be a defining ideology, it is miles to the right of the median voter, at odds with the politics of their own leader, and the party is incapable of nurturing any new talent who won't be regarded either as a bit dim, or just downright unpleasant (or both). It could have insulated itself early on, but like Reform, they just didn't think firming up the basics before launching mattered all that much. They launched the aircraft with the intention of adding engines later.

While senior figures within the party are loosely describing Restore as "Nationalist" the party (taking after Lowe’s conservative instincts) will eventually be decried by their own nationalist support base as containment. "Nationalist" in Britain does have an agreed definition, which is inherently socialist and profoundly antisemitic. At that point, you are in horseshoe territory where you have more in common with the freaks on the far left. Meanwhile you'll have the official Rupert Lowe account churning out risible hang-em and flog-em slop which will cement Restore as a completely unserious party.

With Reform also descending into shambles, it might just be enough for right-leaning voters to wearily accept that middle of the road Toryism is the closest they will get to stable government, and Badenoch's successor will reel them in. Put simply, too many of the fundamentals in both Restore and Reform are too broken to ever make for a viable government. On present trajectory, Farage doesn't even last as long as Starmer if he gets in at all. A serious party might be able to pick up the pieces, but that's not going to be Uncle Rupe's clown car.

As it happens, I'm told that Lowe doesn't even run his own X account. I'm not sure I believe it, but either way, he is an absentee landlord. He's not leading. Slop-tweeting isn't proper ideological direction, and its not joined up with any policy-making. It almost feels like he's washed his hands of that kind of intellectual leadership and has outsourced it to his junior lieutenants who are inexperienced and in a world of their own. They tend to pander to the online nationalist crowd, who are paranoid about "zionist infiltration". And that's not the only problem.

There's an informal alliance with the Swindon manbaby whose Lotus Eaters media platform is calibrated to American audiences, who in turn are influenced by a zoo of American YouTubers. As such, Uncle Rupe's zoomer following is absolutely addled on a politics that is not in any way reflective of British sentiment, which is a complex blend of social conservatism and free enterprise, but also elements of socialism in its proper place. This lot genuinely think they are representative of the silent majority, when in fact their policies is very niche, very online, and repellent to the median British voter.

The right, in my view, is only going to prosper with a sane, genuinely centre-right party (but one that is deadly serious about immigration and demographics). As soon as you go wading into murky nationalist waters, you're in with a pretty shady bunch. For sure, they might have massive social media reach, but much of it is international - and has next to zero bearing on elections. They're also pretty shitty people. You'll see them get more abusive as time goes on.

Essentially, Rupert Lowe's personal politics are quite close to what the British right-leaning voter wants, but his party is running its own hustle - and I doubt Lowe is even aware of the shifting tides in his own party. But here's the thing... It won't go unnoticed. Mainstream political columnists have already seen Restore's true colours, and word will get out. Shire Tories might like the cut of Rupert's jib, but they won't vote Restore if it doesn't past the sniff test.

As to Makerfield, in a just world, Andy Burnham would be humiliated in this by-election. A careerist swooping into bail out a Labour party in its death throes ought to be viewed as a pretty cynical stitch-up, but in choosing such a dire candidate, Farage may have already handed the game to Labour, with or without Restore in the mix.