This week there has been an outbreak of bickering among Restore Britain supporters, which seemingly started when a speech by Orla Minihane (that included non-white British girls as victims of grooming gangs) triggered fury from the hardliners who said “They aren’t our girls, who cares?”.
This triggered a robust defence of her from veteran Fair Fuel campaigner and Restore spokesman, Howard Cox - causing the gossip girls of Lotus Eaters to stick their oar in for no useful purpose. The drama triggered the membership resignation of one Steve Laws, de facto leader of the antisemitic faction of the online right.
Likely this will result in his supporters following his lead. There has been some disquiet in the ranks for some time with Lowe having appointed Henry Bolton as a spokesman, leading to the accusation that the zoomers are being elbowed out as the party become more of a watered-down civic nationalist party - the same way Reform did (as though it ever wasn’t).
This has left to wider squabbling. The precise details of who said what are not especially important but it is the wholly predictable consequence of the ideological schizophrenia in the party I have talked about since its inception. This has been a very avoidable running sore for Restore Britain - as a direct consequence of its failure to encode an official definition.
While Rupert Lowe could afford to spend some of his political capital by extending an olive branch to the Tommy Robinson brigade, no party can seen to be directly associated with borderline neo-nazis. I doubt Lowe understood precisely who he’s been defending in his ranks. Even temporary alliance with them proves unsustainable, and an electoral liability.
That said, I do have *some* sympathy with the zoomer nationalists on as regards to what they call the "cringe boomers" of Reform (and now Restore) because the boomers in question are former members of Farage's entourage, and inherently of the Ukippy ilk - and never particularly serious people even in their political prime. But at the same time, they did all rush to join a party led by (checks notes) Rupert Lowe. It's a bit like a vegan going into McDondalds and complaining they serve hamburgers.
One of the main reasons I joined the Homeland Party was because I'd come to the conclusion that the Tory Boomer Thatcherism of Farage and his entourage of ex-MEPs was a political dead end - and any party that was a Ukip derivative/offshoot would not prosper. Not necessarily because the ideology is faulty but because the Ukip stable (and its successor entities) has never produced a single serious politician. I don't think they ever came even close. It's why I advised Homeland against making any overtures towards Ben Habib before he started Advance UK. There was broad agreement on that point. Steve Laws himself said we need to step over them.
It somewhat baffling then, that (after wrecking Homeland) they all immediately charged to join Restore Britain when it was headed up by exactly the sort of Ukippy slop merchant they detest. Behind closed doors, they don't even take Lowe seriously, never mind Cox or Bolton.
This is the ideological clash I have warned Restore about from the beginning. But we should also recall that it is, primarily, a generational divide - where the legacy dissident right has nothing whatsoever in common with zoomer nationalists or indeed zoomers in general. They do not speak the same political language - and they do not operate from the same historical context. Boomers think Churchill is a national hero while the radical zoomers think he was a drunk who wrecked the empire and destroyed Britain's future. There was no scenario where this was going to make for an intellectually coherent, stable party. It's hardwired to self-destruct.
But now it seems the zoomers are taking their bat home, because the other side of the equation sees them as a fundamental liability (which they are). That then leaves Restore Britain as a Tommy Robinson aligned civant boomer party - which will never shake off its Ukippy amateurism or present a serious alternative to Reform, or pose a threat to them.
As such, all it can do is linger on for a while, harvest more engagement on social media, then fizzle out to nothing, just as the last three attempts have. The bottom line here is that neither faction of the radical right is capable of sustaining a serious political enterprise. Reform has cornered the market on slop, and we do not need another slop party.
I don't know if Rupert Lowe understands this, but his party is now at a crisis point. The departure of the crank right doesn't make remnant Restore electable in its own right. The more the grotbag nationalists desert it, the more it begins to look like a re-badged version of Advance UK with an ethnocentric tinge, not a million miles away from Reform in terms of vibe and ideology (insofar as it has one).
This, though (with a little work), could be an inflection point for Restore. Since there is no longer any point pandering to the grotbag tendency, it is much freer to define itself as something more palatable to the mainstream right. For that, it needs to do what it should have done from the beginning and set out a party definition.
Moving forward, it has to compete not on ideological grounds, but on seriousness and competence (not least because the ideological ballpark is the same as Reform). For that, it needs to see itself less as a political party and more of a troubleshooting squad, assembling serious people to develop serious policy - so it can say that unlike Reform, it has the talent and the knowhow to fix Britain.
Whether it can locate and attract serious people is another matter, and it's far less certain they can produce serious policy. The tendency on the right is to decide what must be done then pad it out with post-facto justifications - not caring if it works, just so long as it sounds plausible.
In all probability, though, the party will continue in its current vein because you're dealing with people who mistake social media engagement for electoral viability and commitment. They see no need to fix the foundations. That's always been Reform's problem, and the cause of most of its problems, and it's why Restore ends up making the same errors.
On that basis, there is no real point in the party existing, unless you take the somewhat cynical and jaded view that there's no point in the right winning unless its going to be relatively hard right on immigration. While that is a supportable view, parties seldom succeed on a nihilistic premise. You still need to be able to outline a positive vision. It can't be based on twee agrarian nostalgia.
If the crank right really are taking their bat home, there is a short window for Restore to rethink and reset, and do all the preparatory work it should have done in the first place. If, though, they carry on as before, still pandering to the grotbag tendency, they may as well pack up now.
On the subject of a party definition, one tweeter, Carl Wilkinson, has a more refreshing nationalist perspective…
Restore must first answer the constitutive question that precedes every policy dispute: who is the political community for which it intends to govern? Britain is not a self-created nation consisting simply of whoever happens to live within the state’s borders. It is a constitutional state resting upon older historic peoples (principally the English, Scots and Welsh), from whose inherited institutions, loyalties and consent its authority ultimately derives. Parliament did not create these peoples; their existence made Parliament and the Union possible.
Restore must therefore say whose inheritance it seeks to conserve and what obligations arise from it. Does the state exist merely to administer the present population, or does it owe duties of continuity to the peoples who created it? Those duties cannot end with defending borders or preserving monuments. They include maintaining the demographic, economic, institutional and cultural conditions through which a people can reproduce itself and transmit its inheritance. Without an answer to that question, Restore’s policies will remain disconnected reactions rather than parts of a coherent national programme.
Nor need this positive vision retreat into “twee agrarian nostalgia.” The object is not to preserve England in amber, but to restore England as a living and self-renewing nation: one in which the English possess a recognised political voice; young people can afford homes, marry and raise families; productive assets and public institutions are strengthened rather than consumed; and each generation expects to pass on a country more secure than the one it inherited.
Britain can survive only as the common political home of living historic nations, not as a deracinated administrative territory inhabited by an interchangeable population. Restore must decide whether it exists to manage that territory more competently or to restore the peoples and inheritance from which Britain draws its meaning. That is the distinction upon which its entire reason for existing depends.
This is as close as you'll get to a clinical definition of a nationalist party - one which I could support, but the problem on the right is not the "ism". Its the "ists" - for whom it is necessary for the purposes of in-group signalling to be overtly and comically bigoted, antisemitic and generally retarded, thus making a party based on this premise unmarketable to anyone with a basic sense of decency and has more than a collection of comics on their bookshelves.
Moreover, the doctrinal strain of British nationalism tends towards socialism, isolationism, anitzionism and other failed ideas, which is why nationalist parties tend to purity spiral themselves into a phonebox. As such, even temporary alliance with them proves unsustainable, and an electoral liability.
Further, the ideology is so very far from where the average normie voter is, it is necessary to meet them halfway and lead them to where you want to be - but the grotbag nationalist tends to view anyone not 100% aligned with their own dogma as a traitor, enemy and subversive. Such unserious people can never produce a serious party - and we have several attempts we can point to as proof of this.
There is also the question of the character of the British people, who are not generally well disposed to jingoism and overt displays of patriotism, not least due to the weight of half a century of liberal indoctrination and propaganda. As such, ideas have to be packaged and sold in such a way that it is safe to cross the proverbial floor. It is not done through clickbaity ranting.
The closest thing to a hybrid ideology is that of National Conservatism, which, while is generally viewed as a civic nationalist framework (within the spectrum of acceptability), can serve nationalist ends through well researched, intellectually consistent, precision policy. This is something that has to be done with wisdom and skill - or not at all.
The establishment of a unified 'sensible' Right of centre party with no historic baggage of the Conservative Party's utter failures, will only materialise after another defeat at the next election by a cooperating Left united in their hatred of the Right.
So the reality is things have to get a lot worse before Britain can be rebuilt brick by brick.
The SDP has a vacancy at the moment. Maybe there’s an opening there for a lonely attempt at serious policy work? You may not win anything but would fly a kite for better policies that would shame other parties into copying them.