{"id":431412,"date":"2026-02-18T01:35:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T01:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/431412\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T01:35:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T01:35:08","slug":"reform-uk-defections-see-new-group-on-kent-county-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/431412\/","title":{"rendered":"Reform UK defections see new group on Kent County Council"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">They added: &#8220;If this is Restore&#8217;s bar for councillors then it must be very low indeed.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Lowe, currently serving as an independent, initially set up Restore Britain as a political movement after he was suspended from Reform UK.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It is now expected to act as an umbrella political party.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">After the launch, the BBC&#8217;s East of England political editor Andrew Sinclair said Lowe &#8220;believes that in a crowded marketplace there is room for another party, on the right, which will pride itself on its independence of mind&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/RupertLowe10\/status\/2023839768895996229\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow\">Announcing the new members on social media, external<\/a>, Lowe wrote: &#8220;I am delighted to announce that seven Kent County Councillors have today joined Restore Britain, and they will form an official Restore Britain group on the council.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He added: &#8220;This is a very important day for our party. There will be many more to come.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They added: &#8220;If this is Restore&#8217;s bar for councillors then it must be very low indeed.&#8221; Lowe, currently&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431413,"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-431412","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\/431412","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=431412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}