← Today in Focus
Today in Focus
The party dragging Nigel Farage further to the right
00:27:36
Daniel Trilling on the far-right party threatening Reform’s chances in the Makerfield byelection
Loading summary
Transcript84 lines
- [00:00]
Lucy Half
This is the Guardian.
- [00:09]
Today is Restore Britain making politics even more toxic.
- [00:21]
Narrator
From globalization to innovation sustainability to market volatility, there's always more than one side to a story. Explore different perspectives on today's most important business and economic issues with the Flipside podcast from Barclays Investment Bank. Hear two research analysts in a lively debate and get insights from every angle. To further inform your view, listen to the Flipside on your favorite platform.
- [00:55]
Lucy Half
With the Makerfield by election only weeks away, many see it as a two horse race. Labour's potential PM in waiting, Andy Burnham and Reform UK's Robert Kenyon, who's faced criticism over alleged sexist remarks. But there's another player that's worth paying close attention to.
- [01:12]
Local Resident
I do think immigration needs sorting out because it feeds into the local area. You know, even just things like traffic, you know you can't get anywhere.
- [01:25]
Lucy Half
Rebecca shepherd, the candidate for Restore Britain, a new party led by Rupert Lowe, the former Reform UK MP who famously fell out with Nigel Farage last year.
- [01:37]
Rupert Lowe
I've tried to work within the system, but I can no longer pretend that the existing political structures are capable of delivering the scale of change this country now needs. That is why today I am launching Restore Britain as a national political party.
- [01:56]
Lucy Half
Restore is currently polling third in Makerfield.
- [02:00]
Interviewer
You told the Daily Mail that you would put illegal immigrants and asylum seekers in, quote, a tented camp with a minimum amount of food. There are islands off the Scottish and English coasts where they can be detained. Put them there and let the midges do the rest. Do you mean that?
- [02:16]
Rupert Lowe
I did say that and I stand by my opinion. People who arrive here illegally should be detained and deported.
- [02:24]
Lucy Half
And though the party was only officially
- [02:26]
registered this year, its founder has been making headlines for espousing some of the most extreme views in British politics.
- [02:33]
Rupert Lowe
We are seeing increasing numbers of people coming here illegally and equally, I think a lot of them have very low iq.
- [02:50]
Lucy Half
Currently polling at 7% in Makerfield. Could Restore ruin reforms chances of a by election win. From the Guardian, I'm Lucy Half today in focus, Restore Britain, the party pushing British politics even further to the right.
- [03:13]
Daniel Trilling, you are a journalist who spent nearly two decades writing about far right politics and you've just written a new book. If we tolerate this and you trace how since the 2010s, the language of that far right politics has crept so much into the mainstream. I wonder if you think if we jump back to that moment, could we imagine that we'd be talking about a party like Restore Britain as we are now in relatively normalized terms.
- [03:39]
Daniel Trilling
Yeah, I ask myself that quite often, actually. Like if you went back to me in 2010 or so when I was reporting on the BNP, the British National Party, who were, you know, this very extreme party founded by neo Nazis.
- [03:53]
Far Right Activist
I was sharing, I shared a platform with David Yun, who was once a leader of a Ku Klux Klan, always a totally non violent one, incidentally,
- [04:06]
Daniel Trilling
Whose ideas at the time were regarded as completely beyond the pale, certainly in mainstream politics.
- [04:11]
Statistician
Let me show you what happened to the BNP's share of the vote. It actually went down here.
- [04:15]
Daniel Trilling
If I can, just 15 or more years down the line, there's going to be quite similar sounding ideas circulating at the very highest level. Would I have been surprised? I suppose my answer is yes and no. Then I thought, you know, this is marginal now, but there are things happening that could make this go much more mainstream, particularly if these ideas are taken up by people with less of an obvious connection to fascism and neo Nazism. But what I think I've been quite taken aback by, and what prompted me to write the new book, is just how rapidly things have got worse in the last, say, three to five years, where, you know, we've had far right populism building for a while in the uk, like in other countries, but it just seems like in the last few years there's been this opening of the floodgates where very extreme ethno nationalist, racist rhetoric is suddenly there, right at the forefront of British politics.
- [05:09]
Lucy Half
So how big is Restore Britain at the moment? Because it's become quite a substantial party already.
- [05:15]
Daniel Trilling
Yeah. So Restore began as a pressure group founded just over a year ago when Rupert Lowe left Reform after falling out with Reform's leadership.
- [05:26]
Rupert Lowe
But we need an alternative to the Reds and the Blues, and now the light blues, if you want to call them that.
- [05:33]
Daniel Trilling
So a new move and then it was launched as a political party only
- [05:38]
Rupert Lowe
this February here on the farm. I am now launching Restore Britain as a national political party. I'm now going to dedicate.
- [05:46]
Daniel Trilling
So for a party as new as restore, and one of its size, opinion polls quite provisional, but it looks like at the moment they're polling anywhere between 2 or 3% and maybe 6 or 7%. And Restore claims to have over 100,000 members at the moment, which would make it one of the biggest parties by membership in the uk. I think you have to take those figures with a pinch of salt because
- [06:08]
Lucy Half
they're saying that's bigger than the Conservative Party, which again,
- [06:13]
Daniel Trilling
the important factor actually is that they're this big online phenomenon. And Rupert Lowe again is one of the biggest UK politics social media figures now. I mean, he's got just under 800,000 followers on X, which is not the largest amount, but his posts have got a much bigger reach because he's tapping in into the far right discourse that is now very prevalent on that platform and also earning a lot of money out of it. He earns, according to Parliament's register of MPs interest so far, 72,000 pounds just from posting on X since being elected as an mp.
- [06:53]
Lucy Half
So on Today in Focus in the spring last year, we talked about the figure of Rupert Lowe, his falling out with Nigel Farage and his expulsion from Reform UK with accusations that he denies of bullying. He'd notably disagreed with Farage on a number of issues at that point, on mass deportations, but also on Tommy Robinson, the far right activist who Farage felt was not welcome in reform.
- [07:19]
Rupert Lowe disagreed.
- [07:21]
How would you describe the politics that Restore is selling in contrast with reform?
- [07:26]
Daniel Trilling
Perhaps, you know, like many other liberal democracies around the world at the moment, we are seeing this surge in support for racial radical, right wing nationalist ideas that have sat traditionally outside of the mainstream of politics. And those are being voiced by a range of different groups who, they don't necessarily get on with one another, but they're all fishing in the same waters. They're all proposing ways in which to redraw the boundaries of national identity. And they set themselves in very strong opposition, not only to certain groups they label as outsiders, but traditional political elites. And within that there is always this tension between moderation and radicalism. The most hardline bits of this loose movement. Someone like Tommy Robinson, for instance, it's in their interest to sound as frightening and intimidating as possible because someone like him is primarily engaged in street activism and online activity. Anytime anybody tries to build a successful electoral project with some of these elements, they've got this problem that, you know, to win votes and to move beyond your core support, you have to sound more moderate, you have to not scare people. For 15 years, really, Nigel Farage has monopolized the space. As reform has grown way beyond any previous project of that sort, you're seeing that tension really come to the fore. So low split with Reform UK over what looks like a mix of personality clashes, which are always very commonly unsurprising. Exactly. But also a feeling that Farrell barrage was being too moderate.
- [09:02]
Rupert Lowe
Zero immigration, net zero immigration is weak, weak, weak. It is insufficient and it is too late. The barbarians are already in the gates.
- [09:17]
Daniel Trilling
Restore have positioned themselves as A harder line alternative to reform, where they're pushing for an even more extreme policy of deportations for unauthorized migrants. But the rhetoric around that, I think, is quite shockingly extreme as well. So launching restore, or Britain as a political party, Rupert Lowe said, millions must
- [09:36]
Rupert Lowe
go safe again for women and children. That I promise you. If that means millions go, then millions go, we're constantly told.
- [09:46]
Daniel Trilling
They're also very strongly against the Online Safety act, which there's a debate about more broadly in politics. But I think because they're a party that thrives on this unregulated social media environment, and particularly the environment on X, which has been deliberately allowed to turn into a cesspit, I think agitating for less restrictions on what you can say and do online is also kind of quite fundamental to them politically.
- [10:15]
Rupert Lowe
I think this act is a wolf in sheep's clothing. It tries to justify itself on the basis that it's acting in the interests of child safety. The reality is, as you say, it's a backdoor to censorship and to more issues.
- [10:30]
Daniel Trilling
The other area in which they're different rhetorically from reform is their idea of what national identity is and their particular form of nationalism. So a successful right wing populist project in Britain has always had to align itself very carefully with civic nationalism. So the idea that national identity is not primarily ethnic, you might want some sort of ethnic and cultural homogeneity, but you are also, at the very least, paying lip service to the fact that Britain is a multi ethnic society. And that's something we accept and perhaps even welcome to a degree. Restore Britain have taken a position that is much more close to ethnic nationalism, that to be British means to be descended from people who have lived here for centuries and to follow Christianity as a religion, for instance. So that's something that a senior official in Restored Britain has posted online in the past, that to be British you have to be ethnically and culturally, which, which really means white and Christian more than anything.
- [11:36]
Panel Member
It is, it is Christian faith, it
- [11:38]
Daniel Trilling
is ancestry and is Christian faith.
- [11:40]
Local Resident
So if you're not a Christian, you can't be British.
- [11:44]
Lucy Half
Which explains, I think, one of the other things that Restore Britain and Rupert Lowe personally has made a huge issue of, which is the grooming gang scandal. He crowdfunded nearly 800,000 pounds to set up his own inquiry into grooming gangs.
- [11:59]
Daniel Trilling
Yeah, something that's fundamental to these radical right wing nationalist movements around the world is that they're always looking for issues that will excite a visceral sense of threat to the nation and Those almost always come down to issues around sex, birth and death. So it's about, you know, the indigenous population or citizens being outbred by immigrants or very often you will find right wing nationalists alighting on issues where there's a mix of crime, sexual abuse and ethnic or cultural difference. And so obviously the grooming gang's scandal, there's a very important political debate around what happened, could it have been stopped, what lessons can be learned, and so on across the whole spectrum of politics. But the reason why the radical right latches onto it is because it's got these other uses, you know, it excites this fear and disgust among the people that they are trying to win the support of. And so Rupert Lowe has made that a big campaigning point himself. He set up this independent self described rape gangs inquiry which is only looking at these grooming cases rather than other issues of systematic sexual abuse or establishment cover ups and so on. That's been funded by several hundred thousand pounds in donations. They say that they're preparing a report at the moment and Lowe is promising to use parliamentary privilege because he's still an MP to name perpetrators or people sort of responsible for allowing this to happen. So that's kind of got the form of a more mainstream political inquiry, but that's not what it's about. I mean, essentially that is, I think, encouraging a form of mob justice and kangaroo courts and so on.
- [13:47]
Lucy Half
There was a very surreal press conference, wasn't there?
- [13:49]
Rupert Lowe
Today we open the hearings of our independent rape gang inquiry. Two full weeks of evidence, testimony and scrutiny.
- [13:58]
Lucy Half
There's a panel of people, Rupert Lowe at the centre with rape gangs inquiry behind sort of replicating a traditional crow.
- [14:06]
Daniel Trilling
It's political theatre. And you know, to make that your sole campaigning point around issues of sexual abuse when you've got historic scandals like Jimmy Savile being allowed to operate as a very well known BBC entertainer for years and years. So there is plenty to talk about in that area. And I think it's always a big red flag when you have a political campaigner like Rupert Lowe just homing in on the one area, systematic abuse that allows him and others to make claims about Muslims, immigrants, cultural difference and so on.
- [14:38]
Rupert Lowe
I don't call them grooming gangs, I call it Pakistani rape gangs because 95% of these people are Pakistanis and, and very often from a particular part of Pakistan.
- [14:47]
Statistician
That's absolutely not so.
- [14:48]
Rupert Lowe
So, so it is true. It is true. But anyway, let's 20, 23.
- [14:52]
Statistician
No, I'm going to tell you, let's park that 224 white, white grooming gang suspects were found compared to 22 Pakistani suspects. Why do you only talk about the Pakistani? That's police statistics from the Times.
- [15:04]
Rupert Lowe
I've now got on my police statistics from the time. If you look at my rape gang inquiry, which you asked me about, and
- [15:10]
Lucy Half
I suppose to that point last week, low at the launch of restore's campaign in Makerfield, compared the label response to the Grohman gang scandal as denial of something equivalent to the Holocaust, which has caused understandably and justifiably a huge backlash. What other extreme things are he and others on the record as saying so?
- [15:30]
Daniel Trilling
Rupert Lowe has also in the past praised Tommy Robinson. He said he deserves credit for all the work that he's done around grooming gangs.
- [15:38]
Rupert Lowe
I think if somebody's done something valuable and has been proved correct, which Tommy Robinson has, you should give him credit
- [15:47]
Daniel Trilling
for that, because Robinson has for a long time agitated around this in an especially unhelpful way, I would say. And there are other figures associated with Restore Britain who have called for re migration, you know, which is the far right's euphemism for policies of mass deportation, and often is used to apply to legally settled migrants as well as, say, asylum seekers. So. So that could potentially cover very large numbers of people living in the uk. And Lowe even said that he would be happy to send asylum seekers to Scotland in the form of internal exile, I suppose. And in his word, let the midges do their work.
- [16:29]
Rupert Lowe
I would send them to Scottish island, give them a bowl of porridge and put them in a tent till they decided to go home and let the midges do the rest. I did say that, and I mean it.
- [16:37]
Lucy Half
And there has been a lot of reporting about the types of people that Restore Britain is attracting. The kind of more extremist, perhaps disillusioned reform UK voters who feels that reform is becoming too mainstream. And therefore there have been a number of people who are identified as being fascist or neo Nazi who are part of Restore Britain.
- [16:57]
Daniel Trilling
Yeah, And I think this really sums up what's happening. You know, Reform have tried to tread this line very carefully where they say, we don't accept fascists and neo Nazis in our party associated with us. Rupert Lowe has positioned Restore Britain slightly to the right of reform, but is still trying to mount a respectable electoral project. The thing is, the sliver of ground between where reform ends and where the fascist and neo Nazis start is very, very thin. And so it's clear that Restore is attracting the support of neo Nazi and fascist Activists so hope not hate. The anti fascist monitoring organization recently have reported that members of Patriotic Alternative, which is a fascist group formed by former members of the British National Party, had been out in Makerfield campaigning for RESTORE.
- [18:01]
Panel Member
British.
- [18:05]
Lucy Half
So RESTORE Britain is attracting these more extremist people, but how would you describe the broader base of its supporters as it grows in size and perhaps becomes more serious of an electoral force?
- [18:17]
Daniel Trilling
Well, I think it's appealing to people who, you know, they may well feel that the system isn't working for them or that the part of the country they live in has been abandoned by the political centre, by the centre of power in London and Westminster and so on. But as well as that, they tend to have very hardline views on immigration and identity. They may well tend towards more authoritarian views on certain social issues, crime and punishment and so on. Traditional gender roles perhaps, and so on. Things like support for bringing back the death penalty appeal to the pool of voters that RESTORE is hoping to pick up support from. Put it more simply, there is a chunk of the British population that have got very right wing authoritarian views most of the time, or at least in most of our lifetimes. Mainstream parties have sufficiently appealed to them on other grounds that that hasn't made much of a difference politically because of the fragmentation of British politics. Now it's becoming possible for parties to scoop up those voters on that basis. The other thing that I think is quite significant about restore, obviously polling for a party at that scale and such a new party is always a bit of a stab in the dark. But there does seem to be some evidence that restore's support is coming from people who don't normally vote. So there's a sign that going even beyond what Reform were able to do along those lines and mobilize people who basically had rejected the political system until now.
- [19:51]
Lucy Half
Gosh, that is fascinating and very alarming.
- [19:55]
There's also the very public support from Elon Musk on X in particular. Last week he retweeted a post of Lowe's adding that Only RESTORE can save Britain. A tweet that got an unbelievable 40 million views. How would you describe that relationship?
- [20:11]
Because it has been critical to the expansion, expansion of restore, hasn't it?
- [20:15]
Daniel Trilling
RESTORE and Rupert Lowe have had the very enthusiastic backing of Elon Musk. Elon Musk obviously is the proprietor of X for a long time, has used that platform to spread his own views on race, identity, quote, unquote, wokeness and so on. But since the beginning of 2025, has really latched onto Britain as a place where he wants to push his ideas to intervene in politics. He's done at least half a dozen posts since Restore launched as a political party, a few, most of which have had over 10 million views each. He'd already been quite a supporter of Nigel Farage and Reform UK before then, but from 2025 onwards he's taken this line that Farage is, as Musk put it, weak source, that Farage is too mainstream now, he's kind of sold out the cause and that the real heroes are people like Rupert Lowe and Tommy Robinson. And Elon Musk has been a big rhetorical backer of both. He's also actually paid some of Tommy Robbins legal fees in the past. So there's actually been some financial backing there in the environment on X, where sort of safeguards against hate speech and abusive content and so on have been removed. And Musk is pushing these far right ideas. It's created a very fertile ground for Rupert Lowe and Restore to build up a profile that is massively outsized in comparison to their actual support on the ground in the uk.
- [21:43]
Lucy Half
Farage has made his ire quite known that Restore Britain has been getting this sort of amplification by Musk. How much of a threat would you say Restore r to Reform now?
- [21:54]
Daniel Trilling
In the immediate term, they're a very pressing threat because the big political challenge at the moment for Reform is to win the Makerfield by election. Both because that might well block potential future Labour leader who would be quite effective at taking them on, but also because they've really got to show that they have momentum. Losing to Andy Burnham would both be a logistical, tactical defeat, but also very symbolic one. And although Restore I think, were polling around 2 to 3% nationally, the more detailed polling and reporting that's been done on Makerfield shows that there's potentially a bigger pool of support for Restore there than, you know, the national average. It's likely, I think, to come down to how many voters there are very online going by the latest polls on Makerfield, there is only about 2 to 3% between Burnham and Reform's candidate. It could potentially really mess things up for them. The local elections in May this year weren't as rosy for reformers, certainly as they portrayed it, but I think quite a lot of media commentary portrayed it as well. On the one hand, it's significant that they made these big advances electorally in England, Scotland and Wales, but on the other hand, they weren't quite as big as they were hyped up to be. They really need a win in Makerfield. To show that they're still a going concern.
- [23:13]
Lucy Half
Coming up Is there a risk that Restore drags Reform UK into more hardline views?
- [23:35]
Jackson Advertiser
This message comes from Jackson. Taxes aren't something you can only think about once a year, with investments planning for tax days year round. Fortunately, Jackson offers tax efficient products. Visit Jackson.com for more information on how our products can make your tax bill a little bit less painful. Jackson is short for Jackson Financial, Inc. Jackson National Life Insurance Co. Lansing, Michigan and Jackson National Life Insurance Co. Of New York, Purchase, New York.
- [24:00]
Panel Member
Most people don't realize how much of their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet, then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where Aura comes in. Aura actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web web. But Aura goes beyond data protection. With one app you get a vpn, antivirus, password manager, spam call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance. All backed by 24, 7 US based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring or just a vpn. Aura gives you all of it together at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today at aura.com safety. Protect yourself now at aura.com safety.
- [25:13]
Lucy Half
Do you think that the threat from Restore might pull Reform back to some of its more extreme positions, particularly in Makerfield at this very, very critical by election?
- [25:22]
Daniel Trilling
Restore have already pulled Reform further to the right on certain issues. So when Lowe had his big falling out with Farage and Reform's leaders and left, it was partly down to a disagreement over how hardline their policy on deportations should be. So low was saying already that Reform's policy should be to deport hundreds of thousands of unauthorized migrants per year. That wasn't Reform's policy at that point.
- [25:46]
Reform UK Member
You know, when he stood up and said that we gotta consider the mass deportation of entire communities, including those born in the United Kingdom, that just moves way beyond a point of reasonableness, of decency, of morality. And that was the moment at which, you know, I realized we just had to get rid of him and get rid of him as quickly as we could.
- [26:11]
Daniel Trilling
Within a few months it was Reforms policy.
- [26:13]
Reform UK Politician
Upon winning the next election a reform government will launch an emergency program to track down, detain and deport all illegal migrants in the United States Kingdom.
- [26:26]
Daniel Trilling
And Reform over the past year have got even more kind of hardline and threatening in their rhetoric around that. And I think that is the effect of RESTORE putting pressure on them and also Elon Musk putting pressure on them. I think depending on how the by election pans out, if Reform do lose and it's widely believed that RESTORE had a hand in that, I wouldn't be surprised if you see a big falling out over strategy within Reform itself. You know, an argument between, I suppose this is all, relatively speaking, of course, the moderates and the hardliners. And you actually saw a sign of this the other day where Robert Jenrick in an interview said one thing about their deportations policy and Zia Youssef, who's Reforms Home affairs spokesperson went onto social media and said that's nonsense. What I'm saying is much more hardline than what he just said is our policy. So you can see these tensions are there. So I think the by election could really bring those to the fore.
- [27:18]
Lucy Half
And Daniel, just lastly, even if, if RESTORE Britain are only polling at just a few percentage points nationally, they have no prospect of ever winning power as Reform UK it seems seriously does. What do you think the effect of having a party like this in British politics is?
- [27:34]
Daniel Trilling
It contributes to an increasingly toxic mainstream political debate, particularly around issues like immigration, cultural difference, identity and so on. And you've already seen in the last year or two politicians right in the centre to echo some of this language. And that's partly because they feel threatened by this pressure from the right. But I think it's also partly because so much of Westminster political culture is still transacted via X seemingly a large part of our Westminster lobby and many, many politicians are comfortable engaging in political debate and letting their ideas and their rhetoric be shaped by a platform run by an overseas billionaire who is trying to interfere in our democratic processes effectively. On that front, I think RESTORE are having and are likely to continue having a very damaging effect. We've talked a lot about how RESTORE have been attacking reform for being too moderate and too mainstream. Perhaps. But let's not forget what reform stand for and what they're proposing. Is it self extreme? You have this challenge growing even further to the right of reform. It also risks having this knock on effect of sanitizing reform longer term. It might cause Nigel Farage problems with the Makerfield by election and a tricky challenge to negotiate the fallout from that afterwards. But a few years down the line, it's possible that with some nimble footwork, reform can turn that to their favour and say, vote for us to keep these extremists out of power. And I think that would be as not if more dangerous for Britain, frankly.
- [29:05]
Lucy Half
Daniel, thank you so much.
- [29:06]
Daniel Trilling
Thank you.
- [29:10]
Lucy Half
That's it for today. My huge thanks again to Daniel Trilling. Do get a copy of his book if we tolerate how the British Establishment Made the Far Right respectable. This episode was produced by Iver Manley, Natalie Kattena and Angelica Jopson and presented by me, Lucy Hoff. Sound design was by Brian McNamara, the executive producers for Sammy Kent and Elizabeth Kassin. We'll be back this afternoon with the latest.
- [29:37]
Rupert Lowe
This is the Guardian.
- [29:47]
Aura Advertiser
Most people don't realize how much of their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet, then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where Aura comes in. Aura actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But Aura goes beyond data protection. With one app, you get a vpn, antivirus, password manager, spam call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to 4. $5 million in identity theft insurance. All backed by 24, 7 US based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring or even just a vpn. Aura gives you all of it together at the same price. Competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today@aura.com safety. Protect yourself now@aura.com safety.