Restore Britain, the new hard-right party troubling Nigel Farage

Businessman and ex-football chairman Rupert Lowe (standing) formed Restore Britain as an alternative on the right of British politics in February.

LONDON - A new political party called Restore Britain is threatening the rise of Nigel Farage’s hard-right group, with a tougher anti-immigrant stance and the backing of tech trillionaire Elon Musk.

Led by businessman and ex-football chairman Rupert Lowe, Restore is tipped to deprive Farage’s Reform UK party of victory over the ruling Labour party in a crunch special election on June 18.

Lowe, 68, formed Restore as an alternative on the right of British politics in February following his split from Reform in 2025 after he and Farage, 62, fell out spectacularly.

A Member of Parliament since July 2024, Lowe is Restore’s solitary lawmaker in the United Kingdom’s 650-seat House of Commons.

But the party’s profile is soaring, thanks largely to Musk, who promotes Lowe’s posts on X, and as the UK witnesses frequent, sometimes violent, anti-migrant demonstrations.

“We are bringing disaffected voters back to the voting booth,” Lowe told AFP in a WhatsApp message ahead of June 18’s by-election for the Makerfield parliamentary constituency in north-west England.

The vote is a two-horse race between Labour candidate Andy Burnham, seeking to return to Parliament so he can try to oust Keir Starmer as prime minister, and Reform’s Robert Kenyon, a plumber.

Pollsters expect Restore’s candidate Rebecca Shepherd, a local businesswoman, to secure somewhere between five and eight per cent of the vote to finish third.

That vote share could be greater than the difference between Burnham, who is expected to win, and Kenyon, whose party lost a separate by-election in February to the anti-establishment left-wing Greens.

Political scientist John Curtice told AFP it was possible that “Restore Britain’s intervention stands between Mr Kenyon and his ability to defeat Andy Burnham”.

“If Reform lose again they risk losing momentum politically,” said Daniel Trilling, author of “If We Tolerate This: How the British Establishment Made the Far Right Respectable”.

“Their own party and supporters are more likely to get frustrated, and we’re more likely to see more splits of the kind that have already emerged,” he told AFP.

It would remove all irregular migrants, plus foreign nationals who commit crimes, are unable to speak English or who claim benefits.

The fringe outfit also supports banning the burqa and a referendum on restoring the death penalty.

“Restore has staked out a position to the right of Reform by taking a fairly openly