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The British political landscape has shifted more in the past five years than it did over the preceding century. By the mid-19th century, the Whig Party had disbanded (as the American Whigs also did at around the same time) or transformed into the Liberal Party. The turn of the 20th century saw the creation of the Labour Party, and a political binary that would last for over 100 years. There have been plenty of other parties, but none have been closer to power in recent memory than when the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg (a man there is absolutely no excuse for), was Deputy PM under David Cameron in a Conservative/Liberal coalition which lasted from 2010 to 2015.

The last time a UK government was neither Conservative nor Labour (discounting coalitions and pacts) was Lloyd George’s Liberal government of 1922. When that administration collapsed, the Conservative Party under Bonar Law came to power, marking the start of over a century of two-party politics. Until now. If you are interested in the recent history of the British “uniparty,” I strongly recommend Peter Oborne’s seminal 2007 book, The Triumph of the Political Class. It was the first book to note the fact that “you can’t get a cigarette paper” between the policies of the three main parties (which were Conservative, Labour, and the Liberal Democrats back in 2007). Oborne—an influential lobby journalist—shows convincingly just how corrosive the Blair administration really was, and I reviewed the book here at Counter-Currents, back in 2018, It is essential reading for anyone interested in recent British politics.

Between Blair’s first victory in 1997 and now, things are very different. Labour next came into power in 2024 not because anyone was wildly enthusiastic about them, but because the electorate were sick and tired of 14 years of Tory ineptitude. The British often vote, not for a specific party, but for change. There will be many Labour voters who will be experiencing buyer’s remorse now, of course, after 18 months of Labour government. Keir Starmer’s approval ratings currently stand at around 20%, four points lower than Richard Nixon’s just before he resigned over Watergate to avoid impeachment. But the voters look as though they are going to vote for change once again, although it won’t be the Tories they turn to. There are new kids on the block.

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Restore Britain is the newest British political party, and the field is a crowded one. Nigel Farage, head of Reform UK, recently pointed out that there are now 11 Right-of-center British political parties, which suggests two questions. Firstly, why is a union between all or some not possible? Secondly, and given that no such synchronization is even remotely likely, how will the proliferation of parties divide the Right-wing vote? Restore are at the heart of both questions. They are led by a man who is capturing the imagination of the British Dissident Right, as well as the animosity of the media and the political class who see a threat to the norm.

Rupert Lowe was one of Reform’s first Members of Parliament (MPs) until Nigel Farage expelled him. He had previously sat alongside Farage as an MEP (Member of the European parliament), and was elected MP for Great Yarmouth in 2024 on the Reform ticket. Then came one of the most acrimonious political conflicts of recent times. In March of last year, Lowe was suspended from Reform after allegations of workplace bullying, harassment, verbal threats to the Muslim party chairman, and refusal to co-operate in the resultant internal enquiry. Lowe strongly denied what he called “vexatious” allegations, and publicly criticized Farage for what he saw as narcissistic Caesarism. Lowe was promptly expelled from Reform UK.

He then sat in the House of Commons as an independent MP before recently formally registering Restore Britain. He is a down-to-earth politician, adept at calmly explaining truths unpalatable to both the political class and the media. He does not draw his Parliamentary salary, being a successful, self-made millionaire, but gives it to charity. He is a farmer, and is thus more tied to the land than other politicians, who mostly despise both the British countryside and its farmers. And Lowe is currently the central figure in a British political landscape he is helping to change.

Rupert Lowe’s dismissal from Reform was dramatic, with Nigel Farage at one point calling the police. The two men seem to genuinely dislike one another, which I think makes for healthy, adversarial politics. There were few sights as nauseating in the first quarter-century of this millennium as that of Labour and Conservative politicians or advisors having matey chats in some taxpayer-funded Westminster bar. They should not be speaking to one another outside of parliamentary debate. But, as noted, they are two wings of the same plane, and that plane is painted in socialist colors. As for the Right, to what extent are Reform and Restore politically conjoined, if at all?

Reform UK has been considered as a shoe-in to win the next General Election, scheduled for 2029 dependent on the upshot of Labour’s current chaos. Farage has almost been crowned with the laurels already, three years away from the national ballot, such is the abject nature of Starmer’s potentially brief tenure. In that context, Mr. Lowe and Restore Britain’s arrival have been surprisingly seismic. With the party just over a fortnight old, here are the current and approximate membership figures for what are now all the main parties:

Reform UK: 270,000
Labour: 250,000
Green Party: 180,000
Conservative: 120,000
Liberal Democrats: 85,000
Restore Britain: 80,000

In context, Restore gained those members in two weeks. They represent two-thirds of Tory membership, and the Conservative Party is the oldest political organization in the world, having existed for 192 years. Politics is joining the rest of us in an accelerated culture.

The biggest problem for Farage is that Lowe’s party will split the Right-wing vote. British Right-wing YouTubers are a pretty good litmus test of current sympathies, and they are taking up two main positions. On one side are those who feel Reform has to get in come what may. Even staunch Labour voters are beginning to realize that all is not well, and literally anyone will be better than this shambolic and corrupt administration. So, as much as you admire Lowe and Restore, hold your nose and vote Reform. The other camp will vote with principle, as soon as Restore has match-fit, vetted candidates. They point out that Farage is too closely associated with Islam, and the civic nationalist line the party takes is not sufficiently resilient to help the white race in the UK. Lowe is on record as saying:

[It is] young white men who feel ignored and insulted… [and] there is nothing wrong with being white, male, and straight.

Farage, since Lowe’s registration of Restore, has started talking about “dangerous ethno-nationalism”. So, the opposing armies are massing. And as if the threatened schism within the Right occurs, the vote may be split even more.

The third man in the current in-fighting on the political Right is Ben Habib. He was also expelled from Reform, and immediately began his own party, Advance UK. An apparent friend and colleague of Lowe’s, Habib immediately announced that he could see a merger between both parties. That bromance didn’t last long, and the two men have already ruled out a merger any time soon. It seems that just when the Right need to unite more than ever, they can’t stop squabbling. Take the case of Matt Goodwin.

Professor Matt Goodwin started as a university statistician, got himself a regular show at GB News, and at the time of writing is about to stand for Parliament in a local by-election in Gorton and Denton in Manchester. He always seemed level-headed and forthright, a natural for TV, always with the facts and stats at his fingertips, and very much a no-nonsense conservative. But he is learning that party comes before principle. This is Goodwin on Restore Britain:

Those criticizing Reform from the right are an assortment of amateurs, egomaniacs, Zoomers with very little political experience, and ideologues with no grip on political reality.

Welcome to the machine, Professor Goodwin. Rupert Lowe is clearly none of those things, and Goodwin may be about to become the CivNat friend of Islam Farage seems to require in the ranks of Reform. If Rupert Lowe can have any effect on the discourse of the Right in the UK, and its free flow, that will be an important step. He is a very English politician, of the old school, and although he is forthright, he will have to see mergers as the inevitable fate of his party.

It is not easy to find an American equivalent to Rupert Lowe. He has the air, politically speaking, of a man who doesn’t turn up to a gunfight armed with a knife, and that seems to apply to a number of Trump’s appointees. But Mr. Lowe does not have the directly confrontational style of a Tom Holman or a Sebastian Gorka. Rather, frames problems with a sort of casual yet ruthless analysis which disgraces the shallow rhetoric of the political class, the droning technocratic chatter to which we have become used to over a quarter-century of the uniparty. Listen to a Starmer speech, if you can stand listening to a Dalek with sinus problems, and dissect it. A huge percentage of it will be rhetorical filler, verbal candy-floss. Lowe makes his words count where they count most.

Starmer has the reverse Midas touch. Everything he touches turns to a substance which is certainly not gold, and he doesn’t even seem to understand the legal system within which he constantly reminds us that he worked at the highest levels. But Starmer was a human-rights lawyer, essentially race-grifting dressed up in the finery of the legal profession. He has none of Farage’s charm, and certainly none of Lowe’s analysis. Starmer is just not very bright. He has let down Reigate Grammar School even more than I have. At the moment, the impression is that the British people would vote for the first person in the phone book if it got Starmer out.

In an age of personality-free politicians, it’s easy to forget that there have been “personality” politicians: Reagan, Churchill, De Gaulle, even the vodka-marinated Boris Yeltsin. There are still some today in Donald Trump, Viktor Orbàn, Marine Le Pen, and Geert Wilders. But they are creatures of the Right. There are no personalities on the Left, and that is intentional. The globalist junta would rather their operatives got on with their work with the minimum of attention. Justin Trudeau was perfect for them, because he could distract with his stupid socks and his crying jags. Personality is only permissible if it distracts from politics. Rupert Lowe is not a showman like Farage or Trump. When you watch Farage walking the stage during his speeches, working the crowd like a stand-up comedian, you see the different style of politicking of the two men. But it is the strength of Lowe’s ideas which are his emblem, not slick, City-boy banter and some Muslim staff to tick the CivNat box. I find Lowe admirable, and wish him well. He is already telling Muslims they can forget about being so uppity if he gets anywhere near power, and one hopes he does the same with the other toxic cultures: blacks, Roma gypsies, Somalis and so on. Throw in white liberal women while you are about it, for added diversity.

Lowe is also a very effective Parliamentarian. Parliamentary Committees are the British equivalent of Congressional hearings, which are both vital components in any process of public-sector accountability and on occasion vastly entertaining. Watching Senator John Kennedy (R, Louisiana) dismantle some incompetent government stooge, with his Gone With the Wind drawl and dry one-liners, is a pleasure. Ruper Lowe is not as much of a showman, but he is proving effective in these committees. These accountability sessions are nowhere near as common as they ought to be in the British Parliament, and it would be nice to see Lowe employ some good orators and inquisitors for Restore to make a united front in these interrogations. The British public sector is super-saturated with woke ideology, financially incompetent, and gets away with far too much. Whatever Mr. Lowe’s political destiny, I devoutly wish that he remains a presence on the committees.

Rupert Lowe also understands the media, as does Farage, but the two men come at it from different perspectives. Farage knows how it works structurally: the bias, the hierarchy of journalists, the toxicity of the BBC. Mr. Lowe, on the other hand, noted the content on the BBC’s homepage as Restore’s own “grooming gang” enquiry is taking place, and the lack of coverage of the latter:

I note the BBC is reporting on its main page the third title of the new Gruffalo book, whether olive oil is good for gut health, and an actor’s attempt to learn a northern accent in the bath.

Not a single word on our rape gang enquiry. Nothing. . . You can’t hate the BBC enough.

That is curious in an era of “hate-speech laws”. “You can’t hate the BBC enough” would surely qualify, and I am surprised no one has brought a prosecution. Rupert Lowe won’t just be a physical target in the months and years to come; he will be an ideological one as well. He will go through the same trials from which Farage graduated with honors: the media smears, the physical attacks and verbal insults, the de-platforming, the de-banking, the debunking. Every Labour and Conservative government in the past half-century has promised a kinder, more decent way of doing politics. And the political rhetoric and threat of violence keeps on ramping up, unchecked by the uniparty.

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Lowe is also making an enemy of Islam. The “rape-gang enquiry” he mentions above is entirely funded by Restore Britain, which doubtless means Lowe himself. The enquiry was something Reform had claimed to be starting, but nothing more was heard. Farage cannot alienate Islam as a voting bloc and has said as much. Reform has put up a Muslim candidate for Mayor of London, his party Treasurer is a Muslim, and he believes Englishness can be both a passport and a family in Pakistan. Lowe has announced a planned program of deportations, which will almost all be Muslims, wishes to ban the burqua, and will halt all planning applications which would turn churches into mosques. The deep state is perhaps even more alarmed about Lowe than they are Farage. And one reason is that there is a sense that Rupert Lowe doesn’t just want to balance the budget, tame both big government and British Islam, and deport illegal immigrants. He wants back a gentler, more green and pleasant land, as it was, when there was something left to conserve. Just take the moral decadence in England at the moment.

The British establishment has taking something of a beating in recent weeks. In the first fortnight of Restore Britain’s existence, two men have been arrested for their connections with the (allegedly) late Jeffrey Epstein. Peter Mandelson is a former Lord and Deputy Prime Minister, and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is the Royal formerly known as Prince. He remains eighth in line to the British throne despite being out on bail, and is the first British senior Royal to be arrested in almost four centuries. Both cases have added a sour taste to Britain’s palate, and this is grist to the mill for both Reform and Restore.

When British values are spoken of today, which they are ad nauseam, they tend to be those of tolerance, inclusion, diversity, and the rule of law. The way that unpacks for the white British is simple: If you don’t tolerate inclusion and diversity, then you will feel the rule of law. They are values concocted by a globalist government. But British values used to be honesty, empire-building, one of the richest traditions in the world, and a refusal to be conquered or otherwise beaten down by foreigners.

At ground level, Britain becomes viler by the day. I keep a file of running UK news stories that interest or disgust me or both, and here are the first two off the pile at random. In the London Borough of Camden, a letter was sent to all residents by the local council. The information provided was printed first in Urdu, the lingua franca of sub-Continental Asia, and spoken by Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. The letter was in six different languages and, although the council were good enough to include English (in case there is anyone left in London who still speaks it), it came in sixth and last.

In another story, a black schizophrenic who had been sectioned multiple times under the Mental Health Act was not sectioned for his next offense. The local mental health authorities had been told that blacks were over-represented among those sectioned (5% of the local population, 20% of sectioning orders), and so the man should be released to improve the figures. A short time later, the black butchered an elderly man, a young girl, and a young boy in a park in Nottingham, using a large knife, available to black schizophrenics at all good hardware stores. A white man who had been sectioned as often as him would have been in care, but behind bars. This simian criminal should have been incarcerated, but his black privilege left him free to slaughter some whites. That is where Britain is now. If Rupert Lowe is in this for the long haul, he may well take the reins of power one day. Historian David Starkey has already warned Lowe that “politics at a high level will eat you alive.” If he cannot win power, does not ruinously split the Right-wing vote and, as expected, Farage’s Reform takes office at some stage, perhaps his party’s policies will have been honed and refined by Lowe’s influence.

We must hope so. It is scarcely possible to envisage a country in a worse state than Britain is now.