The Makerfield by-election as well as being Andy Burnham’s hoped for stepping stone to the Commons and therefore the Labour leadership is also showing the world what an absolute binfire the Restore Britain Party has turned out to be. This vanity project of a party set up by the former Reform MP Rupert Lowe when he turned his Restore Britain pressure group into a registered political party is imploding at a rapid rate.
So far this motley collection of fools, extremists and podcast bros (some of whom I used to have a lot of time for but less so now) has:
Passed off pictures of activists and canvassers from Great Yarmouth at the recent local elections as pictures taken during the the Makerfield campaign.
Attracted some genuine neo-Nazis in the form of the Patriotic Alternative group as campaigners.
Selected a candidate, Rebecca Shepherd, who doesn’t seem to be all that visible or voluble and who at one point appeared shocked and embarrassed at one of Rupert Lowe’s rants onstage.
Who have supporters and activists who have engaged in online rows about policy and personalities which have included some restore activists accusing others in Restore of being ‘Jews’ and ‘Zionists’.
Have attracted a whole load of people who appear to be unreconstructed supporters of the neo-Nazi British National Party (BNP).
Made claims that they are garnering massive support from Makerfield residents that seem to be falling apart when real polling figures from the first opinion poll carried out in the seat by the Sunday Times show them on 7%.
Made unrealistic claims about being able to win this seat when it’s clear that they cannot.
Have rarely shown ordinary people interacting with Restore canvassers. Nearly all the pictures I’ve seen of Restore in Makerfield show gatherings of Restore activists, mostly from outside the constituency it appears, in pubs or halls and even then it’s clear that this is not a well supported outfit.
Have primarily concentrated on attacking Reform even though it’s Reform that have the best chance of denying Burnham his chance of a Commons seat and throwing the increasingly hated Labour Party into a damaging leadership fight. Restore clearly have no strategic or tactical abilities or any skill in reading the wider situation.
Are not dispelling the criticisms of Restore being a party that is little more than a personality cult based around the worship of Rupert Lowe. Lowe is not doing much in the way of challenging media in connection with this contest, which is needed to get a party to a wider audience and for a party to properly set out its stall and instead is being given softball interviews by fawning podcast bros.
There’s a whole lot more criticisms out there of Restore and these criticisms are going to get more intense and more weighty as time goes on. The party’s cynical exploitation of the data gathered in Restore’s independent grooming gang inquiry, data that survivors gave to Restore in good faith when Restore was a pressure group and not a political party, is also likely to come out and bite them hard as more public and media attention is turned on Restore.
Restore seem to be all that many of us predicted it would be which is a home for nutbags, misfits and those engaged in the right wing version of the political purity spirals that have so far been mostly a feature of parties of the Left. They are, to use an analogy based on Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’ the ‘Popular Front of Judea’ of British politics, poorly supported, poorly managed and with few supporters who are not complete nutbags.
Restore are still dangerous. In a tight contest which Makerfield is likely to be, the few hundred or maybe even a thousand or so votes might make the difference between Reform winning or Andy Burnham winning and going on to damage Britain even more than Labour has already damaged the country.
Restore are an incoherent mess, riddled with extremists, fantasists, political fraggles and cynics and are lacking in even basic knowledge of political tactics. I was wary of Restore and it appears that so far my wariness has been justified.
Links
Manchester Evening News polling for Makerfield
Why I will not touch Restore with a bargepole.
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