End of the road for Rupert?

Regular readers might want to skip this one. Even I’m bored of it. I’m not saying anything new, but there are certain markers I must log for my own purposes. Rather predictably, the infighting has intensified. There’s considerable disquiet on X among Restore Britain supporters. They are slowly coming to terms with the fact that Rupert Lowe is not whatever they assumed he was.

Earlier this week he denounced ethnonationalists, and another interview has emerged where he makes it clear that he is a boomer conservative civic nationalist. This is counter to the direction his lieutenants are taking his party in.

Consequently, the party as a whole is incapable of settling on a consistent message, where the leader, largely unaware of what is being done in his name, undermines the efforts of his top people who are always in damage control mode. They can’t get Lowe to stick their script. As with Reform, the party ideology is whatever the leader says it is, and however hard Restore activists attempt to project an alternate interpretation, they can’t get away from the fact that Rupert Lowe is what he is.

Already the hardline ethnonationalists are taking their bat home, and thus the party is gradually shedding its most vocal, but most fickle online support base - who’ve spent the last three months telling us that Lowe is really the real messiah this time. Charlie Downes can no longer keep up the pretence that his party is something that it isn’t, and nobody would believe him if he did.

Readers will know that this is precisely what I predicated many times over. A party that sets out without a nailed-down definition will end up with an internal space race to define it, having to fend off entryists who want to turn it to their purposes - who will wreck the party rather than allow it to proceed on any terms other than their own.

The problem for Lowe now is that he has set the parameters, parking the party alongside Farage ideologically, and is now a direct competitor, with no obvious unique selling point. He now has Reform attacking him as well as the online right, and not even Lotus Eaters can paper over the cracks for him.

Ultimately, Restore was only ever going to succeed by presenting as a more serious party than Reform. It was for Rupert Lowe to demonstrate that Restore met Rupert Lowe’s own criteria for seriousness. What we’ve seen instead is the exact same low effort populist slop, just with a Daily Mail comments section tinge. To my mind, if there was a role for Restore, it was to demonstrate what Reform should be doing in terms of messaging and policy content - but you’re dealing with people who simply don’t want to put in any serious effort or thought.

As to whether Restore can survive in some form, I really don’t know. They’ve put up a candidate for the Manchester mayoral race, a father of a grooming victim, but the issue simply doesn’t have the electoral traction they think it does across a whole metropolitan area. It should, but it doesn’t. They are not set to perform well, and will struggle if their activist base is already disillusioned.

Ultimately, the hardline ethnonationalists will have to learn that if they want a party that sings their tune; that wants full remigration, and is explicitly “anti-zionist”, then they will have to start one. Being a home for the largely self-discrediting figures of the far right, it is unlikely to gain any traction outside of a small corner of X.

It is notable that even with deep pockets, major US attention and an endorsement by Elon Musk, Restore still isn’t able to gain ground. These pathological losers have nowhere else to go. They either have to shut up and accept Restore for what it is, taking what they can get, or watch another ill-conceived venture fail.

To my mind, there was never much mileage in building another party around a messiah, especially not an old irascible tyrant. If you’re going to do that, the first mission is to build an organisation on an intellectual foundation that can withstand the departure of its leader. Without Lowe, the party is little more than a fraternity of angry zoomer men without adult supervision.

The sad part part is that this has been a huge waste of an opportunity. The rationale for creating an alternative vehicle on the right was sound. While Reform has firmed up its rhetoric, there is no basis to trust that it will do what it says in office. There is even more ideological contradiction in Reform, and it is still a completely unserious rabble. But now we’re stuck with it. It is the de facto protest vehicle of the right.

For my money, the next three months will be decisive. Any which way you spin it, Reform is not yet an election winning machine. It is not winning by-elections, and its polling has been stagnant for some time. Much is contingent on just how bad Andy Burnham will be as Prime Minister. Labour can expect a short-lived polling bump just for ridding us of Starmer. It might just be enough to keep Reform at bay if Burnham calls a snap election. Right-leaning voters might very well conclude that we don’t have the luxury of any more psychodramas on the fringes.