Finally we have an answer to the question: ‘How popular is Rupert Lowe’s party Restore?’ The answer is: ‘Less popular than the BNP.’ Despite swarming Makerfield with aggy canvassers barking ‘Nigel Farage is controlled opposition’, the party won just 6.8 percent of the vote. Back in the 2010 general election the oafish BNP got 7.4 per cent in Makerfield. Oh dear. Taxi for Rupert. Back to your cushy pad down south, sir.
That’s what happened to Restore in Makerfield: the collective hallucinations of the very online right crashed against the normalcy and decency of working-class Britain
The self-delusion of Restore’s digital minions felt almost malarial. Every day they made ever more feverish predictions about their imminent ascension to power. Some of them predicted they’d get more than 20 per cent in Makerfield. Lowe – or whoever runs his socials – was madly tweeting about all the things a ‘Restore government’ would do. Weed-head Elon Musk lapped it up while your average Brit was thinking: ‘Rupert who?’
Rarely has there existed a party so untethered from reality. It’s normally the anorak left that engages in such lunatic self-deception, like when three men and a musty dog meet above a pub in Archway to plot the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Now we had the same from the right: tweeters with Richard Lionheart as their profile pic outlining their plans for a Ministry of New Crusades to wage righteous war on the Islamic hordes. You’ll have to fly the parental nest first, boys.
Restore is clearly suffering from one of the worst cases of Internet Brain we’ve ever seen. Because all they ever see when they log on are memes of a shirtless Lowe wielding a chivalric sword against England’s ‘invaders’, they came to believe that such tragic digital toadying is normal. They thought the rest of us would likewise fall at St Rupe’s feet and beg: ‘Save us.’ But we didn’t, because we’re grown-ups.
That’s what happened to Restore in Makerfield: the collective hallucinations of the very online right crashed against the normalcy and decency of working-class Britain. I’m not surprised at all that Restore ended up doing worse than the BNP, just about scraping back their deposit. I saw them in action when I was in Makerfield last weekend and it was all so negative, so caustic, so Farage-obsessed. Off-putting is an understatement.
For all the puffed-up patriotism, it’s clear Restore hates Farage more than it loves Britain. The party’s leaflet in Makerfield was a turgid, anxious screed listing all the ways Farage will apparently sell out the nation. Even worse, he has ‘sneered and laughed at us [in Restore]’, blubbed paragraph 14 (seriously: paragraph 14). This isn’t politics – it’s the continuation of Lowe’s beef with Reform, which kicked him out last year. My man, move on.
What Makerfield proves is that the vast majority of the working class wants nothing to do with Restore’s politics of cruelty. They don’t need a wealthy businessman and his online acolytes coming up to tell them that Britain’s borders are broken and the rape-gang scandal was one of the worst atrocities of the postwar era. They know this. They’ve been discussing these egregious failures of state for far longer than Lowe has.
But what they reject is the brutishness of Restore’s ‘solutions’. As has been documented in the press, Restore has suspected neo-Nazis in its ranks. Some of its members want all non-whites expelled from the kingdom. Some have even flirted with the idea that Hitler was misunderstood. Listen, if you think Third Reich sympathising is going to go down well in working-class towns where men died for a Nazi-free Europe, you are off your rocker.
Restore has had the Corbynista experience. I remember a few years back when trustafarian Trots schlepped up north to try to win the Red Wall to the cause of Jeremy Corbyn. Invariably they all came back with horror in their eyes, whispering: ‘My God, they’re racist up there.’ The Corbynistas discovered that working-class voters don’t want infinity ‘asylum seekers’ lounging around in their local hotels and living off their taxes. And now Restore has discovered that working-class voters also don’t want those ‘asylum seekers’ herded into a camp and feasted on by midges, as Lowe once proposed.
Britain has a solid core of morality. People know that the problems we face are serious indeed. They told me so in Makerfield. They are desperately worried about illegal immigrant males. They want to stop the boats. They want native Britons to be prioritised for welfare. They think successive governments have been too soft on Islamism. But they don’t want us to burn our principles as we look for answers. Britain’s future isn’t a game to them, as it seems to be for some of Rupert Lowe’s helm clingers.
So 7 per cent of Makerfield went for Restore. I reckon it’s also about 7 per cent of the country, or thereabouts, that still madly believes everyone on earth should be entitled to social housing and pocket money the minute they hit our shores. It’s the rest of the country that will save us, not some muppet who thinks tweeting ‘DEPORT’ on a loop makes him a Knight Templar.
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