A few notes on Restore Britain.
And it's infiltration by the Lotus Eaters
Restore Britain launched to much fanfare over the weekend. It’s probably not worth covering in huge detail because I give it a few weeks before it implodes. Nonetheless, it could become a pain in the arse in an increasingly online political sphere.
For what it’s worth, there may be space to the right of Reform for a party that exists, in part, to ensure Reform doesn’t drift into becoming the Conservative Party. Certainly, a few of us have disagreed about the nature of some defections, although most have been a positive contribution to the party and have knowingly helped kill off the Conservatives. A party to the right of Reform could plausibly argue that the Overton window is shifting on what is and isn’t acceptable. It could publish arm’s-length policy. Indeed, that’s what it initially set out to do. The “Re-migration” paper it published wasn’t just a who’s-who of cranks: there were serious people behind it who’d written serious policy.1
Unfortunately, despite the noble intentions, a kind of Gramscian march through the institutions has happened. In this case, a bunch of Catholic socialists under the moniker of the Lotus Eaters have increasingly operated the organs of Rupert Lowe’s Twitter account and, of course, Restore itself. The warning signs were there. Back in January, Restore, then a think-tank/pressure group, put out a policy paper on what is to be done to save the pub. So far, so good. The pub is an important part of British life and there’s nothing wrong with contributing ideas.
Unfortunately, you could also see it was, in part, an exercise in auto-fellatio. Among the fairly milquetoast proposals about fiddling with business rates and beer duty, there was a moderately interesting idea to allow 16-year-olds to drink on premises in much the same way they’re currently allowed to order a beer with a meal when accompanied by parents (i.e., limited in what they could order). But one policy proposal raised eyebrows: introducing clear meat-labelling requirements to support British farming standards.[1]
I’m no Tim Martin, but I can’t help feeling this was a bit of a non-issue. Halal slaughter, for pub food is a category error. Pork scratchings and pints of cider are not where supply-chain opacity is biting hardest. It is the kind of proposal that functions primarily as a Culture War marker: a way of telling the in-group who you are, not a way of solving a pressing, measurable problem. In other words, this was the canary in the coal mine for the more overt “chud” aesthetics Restore is likely to adopt as it tries to keep its online base energised.
The problem with launching a political party based on personal animosity is that sooner or later you run out of things to talk about. And, despite the massive online following, there’s actually very little Lowe and Farage disagree on. Lowe has repeatedly reaffirmed his support for civic nationalism and has repeatedly, more controversially for his online fanboys, affirmed support for Israel.[2]
It’s also clear he does not run his own accounts; being a boomer, he has handed the keys to young whizkids whose tweets regularly go viral. As for the Lotus Eaters, they’ve been trying to run a balancing act: wink-wink, nudge-nudge at more identitarian people online — Zoomer Historian and Steve Laws — while retaining plausible deniability by not overtly endorsing them.
Connor “Codpiece” Tomlinson honed this art during his spat with Danny Finkelstein, whereby he wasn’t overtly antisemitic in his criticism, but was very happy not to disavow the antisemitic framing others attached to it. The problem with this is that, due to the necessity of adopting official positions in the real world, you are inevitably asked whether you support these sentiments wholeheartedly — and that leads to problems.
Enter Charlie Downes, who in a TalkTV interview last night with Alex Phillips, stumbled over the definition of what being British was, clumsily saying it was some essence of ethnic identity but also a Christian one, too.[3] He contrasted this with the Blairite identity that Britain is a country of values you sign up to. That’s a perfectly reasonable criticism, but it’s not particularly radical or unique to Restore. It is, if anything, a fairly mainstream objection, adjacent to Blue Labour arguments about belonging, continuity, and the limits of procedural multiculturalism.
Again, what Downes was attempting was a triangulation exercise: flashing a bit of ankle at identitarian elements while remaining plausibly deniable. The issue is that it came across as garbled and incoherent. In fact Sunder Katwala-style “British values” can seem the height of coherence by comparison, because there are things you can actually stand up and tick a box around — rather than “it’s a bit Christian, but you have to be British, but maybe not”.
While it’s undeniably amusing to watch people as slippery as the Lotus Eaters end up with egg on their face, it’s hard not to feel some genuine sympathy for Rupert Lowe. He is, in the best sense, a Mr Smith Goes to Washington type: a serious constituency MP, an able public speaker, and - whatever one thinks of his politics - plainly a man who cares about his constituents and the country.
That is precisely why this flirtation puts him in an almost impossible position. The online ecosystem that has grown up around him is trying to pull off a double move: harvest the energy of quasi-ethno-nationalist sentiment without paying the cost of endorsing it. But once your profile is large enough — and once you’re no longer merely a “platform” but a politician with ambitions and scrutiny — you don’t get to live in the realm of implication and atmosphere. You get pinned down.
From here, Lowe has only two stable equilibria, and both come with heavy costs.
First: he leans into it and endorses the quasi-ethno-nationalist framing openly. If he does that, the media doesn’t need to be especially malicious to make his life hell. It becomes a permanent framing device: every interview, every panel, every profile, every by-election appearance reduces to the same questions, asked in slightly different words. He gets a millstone around his neck that never comes off. Even if he later tries to moderate, the archived clips do the work for them – he will be past the point of no return.
Second: he disavows. In that case, he may regain a degree of mainstream legibility, but he will be attacked by the very online constituency currently flattering him. The same people who specialise in insinuation and plausible deniability will switch overnight to accusations of betrayal. “Sellout” “Cuck” becomes the new organising emotion. And because the entire point of the flirtation was to keep those people energised, the withdrawal triggers a backlash.
What makes this more frustrating is that Lowe has shown he understands reputational drag. He was wise enough to avoid a joint venture with Tommy Robinson — not because Robinson lacks “reach”, but because the negative baggage is so heavy it overwhelms any potential upside.
Lowe has everything to lose and almost nothing obvious to gain. He will most likely keep his seat (Great Yarmouth) in 2029. If Reform/Farage fail to deliver the goods, Lowe is well positioned to become a credible exile leader: the figure who can say “we were right about the diagnosis, but we need a grown-up vehicle now.” That is a powerful position, but it requires not being toxified.
By contrast, the Lotus Eaters themselves have little to lose reputationally from this, but plenty to gain: clout, audience, and Elon buxxx. And when it all goes wrong, they can always move on to the next mark, like an Indian tech scammer who’s drained Mavis’s 78ans’ bank account and disappeared. Leaving Mr Lowe to pick up the bill.
[1]https://assets.nationbuilder.com/restorebritain/pages/695/attachments/original/1767788952/Restoring_the_British_Pub.pdf?1767788952
https://assets.nationbuilder.com/restorebritain/pages/630/attachments/original/1760000259/Mass_Deportations__Legitimacy__Legality__and_Logistics.pdf?1760000259
Lowe seems to be more or less wholeheartedly embracing the ethnonationalism with *exceptions*. There are very obviously non white Britons who fit in, contribute, and have everything except the racial profile. Hell, I'm one of them. And I can entirely understand why the remigrationists say theirs is the moderate option - it is - because if we keep kicking the can down the road what will actually happen is either a massive and unselective pogrom a few years later, baby and bathwater stuff, or some form of "New Troubles", not confined to Northern Ireland. And not the uniparty, not Reform, not anyone can do anything to prevent it.
Restore does not seem to want that, they seem to want an end to the freeloading, and the ghettoisation of major cities. That whites should be, and remain beyond the foreseeable future, a clear majority in Britain should not be a controversial position to take. That recent noncontributing arrivals should be at the back of the queue for state services should also be noncontroversial.
Migration works best with countries where there are clear and good reasons for traffic in both directions. What has happened at increasing speed since 2015 is nothing short of settler colonialism.
I don't know, I thought it was a bit nit-picking to criticise the pub/halal/British farmers meat malarky. I understand you think this is just one manifestation of a general 'red meat to the mob' mindset but perhaps best to wait until that becomes bleeding obvious rather than generalising from one small questionable policy nestled among a raft of otherwise good ones .