It was a Mail on Sunday headline with all the ferocity usually reserved for general elections, but the target was not Labour. “Restore Activists at ‘White Supremacy Summit’,” declared the front page on 14 June, aimed squarely at Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain, the vehemently rightwing outfit that regards Nigel Farage’s Reform UK as too weak on deporting migrants.
The Daily Mail followed the next day with another blow: “Restore is the ‘new home for neo-Nazis’”, citing Lowe’s claim that if the far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson, wanted to join Restore, it was “up to him”. A Reform source supplied the killer quote for that headline.
“Mail on Sunday and Daily Mail launched front-page attacks on Rupert Lowe's Restore Britain, as far-right activists rally behind the party.”
Restore Britain described the story about the summit as “totally irrelevant” and a “hit piece”. But Lowe saw the attacks as a sign of success. “Two Daily Mail front pages in a row abusing Restore Britain in the most spectacular fashion,” he said. “We’ve got the buggers on the run.”
The prominence and strength of the stories have caught the eye of senior figures in Westminster and the media, who view it as a sign of how the rightwing press is reacting to the fracturing of the British right. Reform figures believe that the emergence of Restore, and its even more stark approach to deporting “millions and millions” of people from the UK, could help push the Mail and other titles towards it as the acceptable option for its readers.
The immediate driver of the Mail’s endorsement was this week’s pivotal Makerfield byelection, in which Andy Burnham is attempting to return to parliament. While Burnham is the favourite, Reform is his challenger and there is a realistic possibility that Restore’s splitting of the rightwing vote could be the difference.
In online chat groups, white nationalists, neo-Nazis and far-right activists are fired up, according to security sources. Those normally indifferent or outright hostile to parliamentary politics are putting their hope in Restore. Even competing extremist factions are showing rare unity in giving their backing. In Makerfield, Restore could cost Reform the by-election, some observers believe.