Smiling and holding up a Restore Britain sign alongside a group of supporters, Rebecca Shepherd, the party’s candidate for the Makerfield byelection, appears in the photograph to be blissfully unaware that the campaigners behind her include a member of the notorious white supremacist group Patriotic Alternative (PA).
The photo is not an isolated incident. Extremism among Restore’s support is so common that anti-racism campaigners have called the rapidly growing party, which emerged this year, “a new home for old fascists”.
The far right has flocked to Restore, in part because Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has closed off its right flank and is shifting towards a more respectable image in the hope of winning votes.
But Restore’s surge in popularity, particularly on social media, has driven a change in tone from Farage and his party, not least in its response last week to police bodycam footage of 18-year-old student Henry Nowak in which he lay handcuffed after being fatally stabbed in Southampton in December by Vickrum Digwa.
Restore’s founder, Great Yarmouth MP Rupert Lowe, who was expelled from Reform last year, has become a powerful figure on X and Facebook, where he has nearly 800,000 and 1.3 million followers respectively.
He posts videos from his farm that portray the image of an English gentleman, interspersed with increasingly extreme rhetoric encouraging mass deportations and bans on the burqa. Lowe is being championed by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, endorsed by the anti-Islam agitator Tommy Robinson and supported on the campaign trail by former members of notorious racist organisations ranging from PA to the British National party (BNP).
Craig Buckley (circled) with Rebecca Shepperd and Restore supporters
The PA member in the Makerfield image was Craig Buckley, who has said he rejects the terms “neo-Nazi”, “extreme” and “white supremacist” but is a proud member of a group police have described as “white nationalist”. A briefing by the National Police Chiefs’ Council prior to the Southport riots in 2024 described the group as part of a cultural nationalist movement that “opposes any activity that is perceived to be in opposition to traditional British identity”.
Members of other far-right groups have also cropped up supporting Restore, including Homeland, Blood & Honour and the British Democrats. Lowe, whose social media profile is frequently amplified by reposts from Musk, has 799,000 followers on the multibillionaire’s X platform and has declared more than £72,000 in earnings from the site since 2024. Farage’s 2.2 million followers have earned him just £21,000 in the same period.
It also suggests that Lowe, who was initially suspended from Reform last March by Farage amid allegations of bullying, which the MP denies, may have access to a significant war chest in the buildup to the general election.
The threat Restore poses to Reform has become apparent in Makerfield, where voters go to the polls on 18 June to decide whether Andy Burnham will win a seat in parliament and pave the way for a Labour leadership contest that could see the the Greater Manchester mayor replace Keir Starmer as prime minister.
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A Survation survey last week predicted Restore will come third, winning 8% of the vote, with Burnham and Labour on 49% and Reform’s candidate, Robert Kenyon, on 39%.
Demanding “remigration” and mass deportations in the millions, Restore speaks the language of extremist “ethno-nationalists” – Charlie Downes, a spokesman for the party, said in February: “Restore Britain believe that Britain is a people defined by indigenous British ancestry and Christian faith.”
Restore claims to have more than 130,000 members, which would put it roughly level with the Conservatives, although this has not been independently verified. Lowe officially registered the party with the Electoral Commission in March, claiming assets of nearly £2.6m. Under current rules, the party does not have to disclose the source of donations received prior to registration, although a forthcoming bill may change this.
Restore’s biggest win at the ballot box so far was at last month’s local elections in England, when it fielded candidates under the banner Great Yarmouth First (GYF), which worked as a test for a planned series of local movements that will fall under the Restore umbrella. The group won all nine seats it stood for on Norfolk county council.
Separate investigations by anti-racism campaign group Hope Not Hate and Searchlight magazine identified a host of extreme figures linked to Restore. In some cases it appears to be taking action to weed out controversial members, among them former PA supporter James Munro, who was removed from the Dundee branch of the party.
But there have also been allegations of antisemitism, including the response to Restore’s decision to hire disgraced former Tory MP Scott Benton to manage its campaign in Makerfield. Benton, who resigned after a lobbying scandal, was pictured with Hebraic tattoos on his torso in an image that was shared online by party supporters. The reactions to the Hebrew markings included antisemitic conspiracy theories and calls for him to be forced out.
Elsewhere, Restore has aligned itself with self-described ethno-nationalist influencer Saskia Teague, who posted on social media after the GYF win: “Exactly what British politics should look like. White. British. Proud.” She has previously called for Islam to be banned in the UK and posted references to British identity being “blood, soil and a birthright”, echoing Nazi propaganda.
Despite raising concerns about racism and ethno-nationalism in Restore’s ranks, former Reform co-deputy leader Ben Habib, whose far-right Advance UK party was a sponsor of Robinson’s 150,000-person rally in Whitehall in September, said he was supporting the party in Makerfield. Habib said he found out that Robinson had switched his allegiance from Advance UK to Restore when the activist, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, announced it on X. Musk also declared his support for Lowe’s party at around the same time.
Several former BNP members have joined or come out in support of Restore, including ex-party leader Nick Griffin, who said: “I am urging all genuine nationalists to join and become active with Restore. Simply because it’s the best place to find good individuals who can be involved in the serious community-building work, which is the only thing that can make a blind bit of difference.”
Joe Mulhall, director of research for Hope Not Hate, said: “Restore represents a realignment within the far right. It is drawing together an uneasy coalition that stretches from figures sitting just to the right of Reform, plus the movement around Tommy Robinson, all the way through to open fascists.
“This includes former members of groups including the National Front, the British National party, Blood & Honour, British Democrats, Patriotic Alternative, the Homeland party and many besides, some of whom have even been campaigning in Makerfield. The party’s danger has only been exacerbated by Elon Musk’s vocal support on social media.”
Lowe and Restore did not respond to requests for comment.
Photographs by Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty Images, Hope Not Hate