{"id":427538,"date":"2026-02-15T20:17:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T20:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/427538\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T20:17:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T20:17:08","slug":"uk-far-right-lines-up-behind-rupert-lowe-in-challenge-to-reform-far-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/427538\/","title":{"rendered":"UK far right lines up behind Rupert Lowe in challenge to Reform | Far right"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a cold night in a dilapidated theatre tucked away at the end of Great Yarmouth\u2019s Britannia Pier, Rupert Lowe<\/a> was launching a far-right revolution. \u201cMillions will have to go,\u201d the MP said as he pledged a policy of mass deportations to rapturous applause and foot stamping from the hundreds of people gathered for what had been billed as the launch of a local \u201cGreat Yarmouth First\u201d party.<\/p>\n

But after introducing five councillors who will stand at the next Norfolk county council elections under that banner, the former Reform UK<\/a> figure went further by announcing that his Restore Britain movement would become a national party.<\/p>\n

In an electoral battlefield littered with failed startups, Lowe\u2019s new party is, for now, little more than a pebble in the shoe of Nigel Farage\u2019s Reform, from which he parted ways last year after a bitter falling out.<\/p>\n

However, over the weekend other parties and figures to the right of Reform quickly rallied behind the new party. Advance UK, led by the former Reform deputy leader Ben Habib and backed by the far-right activist known as Tommy Robinson, said it would consider a merger.<\/p>\n

Such a force could cost Reform a number of seats \u2013 and potentially even power, in a wafer-thin general election result \u2013 by splitting support among those drawn to hard-right anti-immigration populism.<\/p>\n

One seasoned Tory strategist said: \u201cWe\u2019ve had a general election with a big Labour win but where a lot of their MPs had margins of around 1,000 votes, so you could see small challengers on the right disrupting Reform\u2019s attempts to follow that.\u201d In 2024, 46 seats were won with a margin of less than 2%.<\/p>\n

The audience for Lowe\u2019s announcment in Great Yarmouth. Photograph: Jason Bye\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

While Reform has placed great store in social media, Habib and, in particular, Lowe have significant presences on X, where each have been amplified by Elon Musk, who funded Robinson\u2019s legal bills last year.<\/p>\n

Musk, who has taken a dislike to Farage in favour of Lowe, retweeted the latter on Saturday, saying: \u201cJoin Rupert Lowe in Restore Britain, because he is the only one who will actually do it!\u201d<\/p>\n

A cohort of young rightwing would-be influencers pushing a more exclusive, ethnically nationalistic view of British identity have flocked to Lowe, who had attained a cult appeal among many Reform members.<\/p>\n

Among those at his event in Great Yarmouth was Lucy White, an activist and sometime GB News contributor accused of racist tweets<\/a>. Steve Laws, a prominent activist and \u201cethnonationalist\u201d influencer, tweeted: \u201cRupert Lowe is our leader. GET IN LINE.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other figures such as the millionaire businessman Duncan Bannatyne and the actor John Cleese have also given approving signals.<\/p>\n

Advance UK, meanwhile, has cultivated street protest. Large numbers of its flags \u2013 in some cases handed out to people unaware of the group \u2013 were prominent among the thousands of people who marched through the town of Crowborough<\/a> last month against the use of a former military base to house asylum seekers.<\/p>\n

An anti-immigrant march in Crowborough, East Sussex, last month. Photograph: Andrew Hasson\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

\u201cReform are vacating the part of the political spectrum on which it was founded. We\u2019re the old Reform, and Reform is becoming the Tories 2.0,\u201d Habib said before the launch of Advance\u2019s first policies at the Emmanuel Centre, a Westminster venue let out by an evangelical church. The former Brexit party MEP says he has put \u00a3100,000 into the party and it has raised \u00a3600,000 from other sources.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have people joining us because they\u2019re fed up with the way Reform is run, or because they have an ideological conviction and see Farage changing the message,\u201d he said. \u201cOur original Reform manifesto had rejected the World Economic Forum and yet there was Farage taking an Iranian billionaire\u2019s money<\/a> to go to Davos.\u201d<\/p>\n

An early indication will come this month in the Gorton and Denton byelection where Advance is standing Nick Buckley, who received an MBE for his charity work but who has since become known for his extreme language on race and Islam.<\/p>\n

Lowe\u2019s party, meanwhile, has adopted a decentralised structure that is likely to show up the top-down approach of Farage\u2019s party. The Great Yarmouth First party is aiming to win all of the nine seats in the borough whenever postponed county council elections take place. This will be a pilot for Restore Britain, which will act as an umbrella for others.<\/p>\n

Separated from Reform, Lowe has proven himself able to attract attention. A self-styled \u201cinquiry\u201d that he set up into the grooming gangs scandal attracted the involvement of Tory MPs including Nick Timothy, Esther McVey and Gavin Williamson.<\/p>\n

The former Reform rising star Maria Bowtell at the Great Yarmouth event. Photograph: Jason Bye\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

In Great Yarmouth, one of the English coastal towns with high levels of deprivation, which Reform used as a springboard for its 2024 breakthrough, a clash between Lowe and his old party looms at the next general election. \u201cWe won it last time and we will win again,\u201d Reform sources said.<\/p>\n

But Lowe remains a rallying point for others. Rightwing activists and former Reform supporters had travelled from as far away as Scotland to attend the event. They included Maria Bowtell, an East Riding of Yorkshire councillor and single mother who was once regarded as a Reform rising star and who had driven down with her young son.<\/p>\n

\u201cReform used to stand for something hopeful but it\u2019s clear they won\u2019t really change anything, plus people like me just weren\u2019t supported,\u201d Bowtell said. \u201cI went on Woman\u2019s Hour and was hung out to dry. I\u2019m attracted now to the idea of independents getting together.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a cold night in a dilapidated theatre tucked away at the end of Great Yarmouth\u2019s Britannia Pier,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-427538","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}