Restore Britain: Groundhog Day

I can already see Restore unravelling. It's taken on all the classic characteristics of a cult, demanding 100% ideological conformity when it doesn't even have a defined ideology. As such, its high priests are demanding conformity to their own guesswork with absolutely no self-awareness. They have absolutely no concept of how they look to anyone outside of their affirmation echo-chamber.

I've seen a lot of this before with Ukip back in 2014, when they were all convinced that Farage was going to sweep the boards in Westminster. Even Matt Goodwin claimed Ukip had dozens of seats "in the bag". It was a little bit tragic, but they were also downright thick and nasty. I wasn't the least bit surprised when they only won a single seat.

I think a big part of that failure was down to Farage. The party had infrastructure that even Reform doesn't have now, but Ukip was just impossible to take seriously. Over the course of that year, comedy became farce. Ukip became a byword for amateurism, and it all stemmed from the fact is was a personality cult based around a disorganised narcissist. That set the culture for the entire organisation.

I recall pointing out the basic flaws at the time, not least the lack of policy coherence and the absence of a Brexit plan, but it was also the embarrassing lack of coordination and message discipline. They were all over the shop. Ukippers didn't want to know, though. they really thought they were cock of the walk and that they didn't need to attend to the basics. Anyone who criticised was the enemy.

This is forgivable for the rank and file, but the problem was that the higher-ups were also delusional sycophants. Eventually they conceded the need for a little bit of professionalism, but by then it was already too late and their idea of professionalism fell far short of what is credible.

Fast forward to now and we see that this pathological amateurism is endemic to any Farage-led enterprise. Much the same could be observed in the Brexit Party and Reform, and it's 100% contagious. Both Habib and Lowe are carriers. Farage simply doesn't attract serious people. Quite a few serious people came and went, and their tenure was short. They all joined in good faith with the intention of improving the organisation, but every one of them found it completely futile. Every single attempt was sabotaged by Farage, just as he's doing now with Danny Kruger.

This is why I don't really see a future for Restore Britain. Examine all the constituent parts and familiar patterns emerge. Temperamentally, Farage and Lowe are peas in a pod, and nowhere you look in Lowe's organisation can you see evidence of them attending to the details and going the extra mile. The little credibility it has is on the back of a couple of people in the background but even they can't carry the load as well as doing the damage control.

Depressingly, it's not going to improve, because the party is a magnet for the sort of people who want the limelight but contribute nothing. They think making noise on social media is the whole of the job. The more likes you get, the more serious you are. Just as polls are the main metric of success for Farage, likes on X are the main metric of success for Lowe. So far as he's concerned, so long as the numbers keep climbing, there is no problem.

Political brands can withstand this kind of indifference if they have a solid base and infrastructure, but when your party has nothing going for it except a fickle, shouty online base and another disorganised narcissist leader (primarily motivated by a vendetta) the brand has no armour against sustained attacks - especially when it's walking into ambushes through lack of preparation.

The problem is that the right thinks 2029 is the cut-off date, and as such, is not prepared to do the hard yards, and is looking to take every single shortcut and backfill the details later. They wait around for eccentric hobbyist millionaires to do all the work for them, and make excuses for them when it isn't done. You then get to a point where everyone wants to do the high profile public skirmishing while nobody wants to do the boring stuff.

In recent weeks, I've taken to calling them the slop right, not just because of their crass approach to policy, but because everything is done on a just-in-time basis, with that same "it'll do" mentality, always falling back on the excuse that it's a new party. That's what Ukip did, and that's what Reform does now, and people are making the same excuses for Restore. But if they didn't think it was important enough to attend to from the get-go, they don't really bother at all. Nobody is less surprised than me that Restore's website has barely been touched for six months.

They one or two figleaves to cover up the rot, but any honest appraisal shows the exact same dysfunctionality as Ukip and Reform. It needs to be taking care of all the basics now, according to a long term plan, but as we heard from Lowe in that interview with David Starkey, if the right doesn't win in 2029 he's off to pastures new. He lacks the commitment, the patience and the skill to build a party that can outlast him. If he croaks, or gets bored, it's all over.

As such, I do not see the makings of a worthwhile endeavour. I wish that weren't the case because nobody wants an alternative to the Tories and Reform more than I do, but no-one is willing to roll up their sleeves and get stuck in for the long term. Again the troops are going to be marched up the hill only to be abandoned again.