What Rupert Lowe doesn't understand about movement building

If you’re going to build a movement, you first have to understand the essence of what you’re actually for. If you don’t, how can anybody else? To simply say we exist to deport millions of people is not a good starting point. It may be a means to a particular end, but you still have to spell out what those ends are.

Though the clue is in the name “Restore Britain”, the party is already the vehicle for people who just want to deport millions. That’s immediately causing them problems because all the cranks and weirdos are jumping on board, and they don’t particularly care about the ends or the means - and they’re the people who’re going to trash your reputation.

This is already playing out. Reform is seizing the moment an stirring the pot, accusing Restore of employing Nazi-like rhetoric. Certain high-profile Restore backers have stumbled into heated, public disputes over who truly qualifies as British. Restore supporters are now advancing policies on deportations which run contrary to Restore's own paper

This underscores that even if Restore does produce policy, they don't know how to use it. The paper states "Voluntary returns must play a significant part of any mass removal programme for the entirety of its duration". It should be emphasising this in its comms - that remigration is self-selecting - thus entirely ducking the arcane and unproductive debates about who should be deported and who is British. The way to survive an ambush is to not walk into it in the first place.

As ever, parties drop a policy PDF and let it gather dust - without using it to inform their comms, while the leader goes off half-cocked undermining their own policy. It’s the same fundamental amateurism as Reform.

A party like Restore does not need to be explicitly ethnonationalist. It only needs to state that it is unafraid of policy that preferences the people of British ancestry. You build your policy delivery infrastructure and then turn the screws as hard as you feel you need to to safeguard British native majority status.

Many times I have spelled out the need for policy, but also a coherent party definition. Had Restore put any serious thought into a formal definition (equivalent to Labour’s Clause 4), not only would it have successfully communicated what the party is for, and who it is for, it would also have established who it is NOT for, thus the neo-Nazi cranks would self-exclude. Restore now has a liability of its own making, which is already paying dividends to its opponents.

This is also where policy insulates you from cranks. It has not gone unnoticed that Restore’s policy offerings are slop. It may have its mass deportations paper but one swallow does not a summer make. Its foreign policy page is a policy desert. Foreign policy, though, would have been useful to have straight off the bat to deter a lot of cranks. Being that Rupert Lowe is broadly pro-Israel, he could have set down some basic parameters with words to the effect of...

We support any nation’s right to self-defence when attacked. Securing a nation’s borders against attack is a fundamental obligation of any state, and to that end, we do not recognise any notion of proportionality. Either borders are secure or they aren’t. Those who instigate a war against a country have no right to dictate the terms of the response.

--Any question of recognising a Palestinian state is contingent on Palestinian society building one, investing in the structures and institutions that make a viable state. While ruling parties of Palestinian territories place the emphasis on waging war against their neighbour over building their own future, outsourcing the functions of government to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the NGOcracy, nobody is obliged to recognise a Palestinian state.

--Militarily, Britain will not intervene, except where it is necessary to contain the conflict and prevent dangerous regional escalation. As such, we will lend materials and equipment to prevent missile attacks by Iran. We consider Israeli settlements on the West Bank to be ill-advised but we consider this an Israeli internal matter. The UK will terminate UNRWA funding.

That would have been an immediate deterrent to the doctrinal ethnonationalists who believe Israel is the source of all evil. The same people who will drag Restore and Lowe’s reputation into the dirt. This is something he could and should have thought about before launching. But didn’t. There are many other avoidable ambushes he will walk into.

One critic of mine says “Pretending that Rupert is responsible for what every single anonymous account on the internet says is absurd” - but that’s precisely what the media will do - and it does have a reputational effect. For sure, the media will smear them as far right, but it really helps if your visible support does not come from those who dabble in Holocaust denial. This stuff matters if you want to build a movement.

Lowe has really made for his own back here. By failing to spell out early on what his party is about, it's become a magnet for the unhinged trashbags of the right, and Restore will be judged on their behaviour, just as Homeland was.

I remember when Homeland was building momentum and then Steve Laws started going off the reservation. Charlie Downes (Restore’s director) spoke to me, registering a passing interest about joining but shared my view that Laws was becoming a liability. I advised against it for the sake of his future career - and I was totally right about that. He would not now be in a position to direct Restore or present at GB News - because of Steve Laws.

Many other presentable people said they liked what Homeland was saying, but didn't want to touch it with a barge pole because of who you have to rub shoulders with. (The same reservations I had throughout). These are the EXACT kind of right wingers Restore needs - but won't go anywhere near Restore if it's the new home for crankery and closet neo-Nazis. It's a problem, and Lowe needs to address it or his party is going nowhere. It was the Achilles heel for Homeland and it will play out the same way for Restore. The mistakes are there to be learned from.

That Restore is already in damage control is a mess of their own making, and one born from the total lack of preparation and intellectual coherence. Something I’ve warned about countless times.

It's ultimately for Lowe as party leader to decide how he keeps the crazies away but my advice to him, which ought to be plain as day, is that you do not want the vocal support of e-celebs who dabble in holocaust denial and consort with known neo-nazis. He has to set out the precise terminology and ideology to avoid being lumped in with them - and the longer he leaves it, the worse it will get.

The problem then is, if he does, all he's got is a party of ex Reform malcontents and bible bashing Ukip lunatics. Unfortunately for Lowe, he’s put himself in a position where he has to do deals with the devil. Frankly, I wouldn't like to be in his shoes. The way out is to define as a hardline civnat outfit (civnat+remigration), but if he does, the online right will denounce him as containment, just as they have with Farage. He's going to have to come to terms with the fact that the online right are ridiculous people.

As usual, being the one to point this out has not made me very popular. There’s a full briefing campaign against me. They’re sure that this time, Lowe is the one true messiah. But I’ve seen all this before with the right rushing to adopt their new messiah and pump his stock on Twitter. As ever they mistake activity for productivity, and online engagement for tangible impact. They make endless excuses for the lack of preparation and coherence, and nothing makes the online right angrier than to suggest they need to think about how they’re going to do things. Why they expect different result this time beats the hell out of me.