Nigel Farage has warned Elon Musk that he is playing into the hands of Labour by backing Reform’s Right-wing rivals in the Makerfield by-election.
The Reform leader accused the billionaire Tesla boss of trying to divide the Right in the UK by sharing support for MP Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain party.
The first poll of the by-election campaign has shown Reform on 40 per cent just behind Labour’s Andy Burnham on 43 per cent in a knife-edge battle for the seat.
In third place, however, was Restore Britain on 7 per cent, potentially scooping up votes that could have helped to secure the constituency for Reform.
Posting on his social media platform X on Sunday, Mr Musk shared a tweet from Mr Lowe about the by-election with the comment: “Restore Britain.”
Speaking to The Telegraph, Mr Farage said Mr Burnham would be “delighted”.
He said: “Elon Musk has decided he will try to split the Right of British politics as best he can. This is supporting a party that’s one man with a social media account. Quite what he’s trying to achieve, I have no idea.”
Division on the Right could harm Reform’s prospects of victory and increase the chances of handing the seat to Mr Burnham, who is widely expected to mount a challenge for the leadership of the Labour Party and the keys to Downing Street.
The intervention by Mr Musk, who previously supported Mr Farage, is also likely to intensify the bitter rivalry between Mr Lowe and Mr Farage after their highly publicised falling out more than a year ago.
Mr Lowe, then a Reform MP, was suspended last March after describing Reform UK under Mr Farage as a “protest party led by the Messiah”. He left Reform to then set up his own party on the Right of British politics.
In the post on X shared by Mr Musk, Mr Lowe, the MP for Great Yarmouth, claimed that Restore Britain was “under brutal assault” by the establishment who “want us gone”.
“They’ve already tried to put me in prison. It will all keep coming and coming. It is going to get a lot worse, the more support we gain. The establishment is getting very nasty with us. Good. It shows we are making progress,” he wrote.
Rupert Lowe has said his Restore Britain party is ‘under brutal assault’ – Jason Bye
Mr Lowe’s “subsidiary” party Great Yarmouth First won all nine seats it stood for on Norfolk county council this month.
Responding to Mr Musk’s intervention, Mr Lowe said: “Elon Musk backing Restore Britain sends a clear message that real change is possible and the establishment is losing control. Makerfield will show Britain the way. We’re not here to patch up a broken system, we are here to restore our country.”
Rebecca Shepherd, a businesswoman who is standing for Restore Britain in the by-election, said: “Makerfield has been taken for granted for decades. People here are smart, they know when they’re being managed rather than represented.
“Elon Musk backing Restore Britain tells you something: the old assumptions about British politics are finished.”
Mr Farage sought to shore up Reform’s support by indicating that only his party and its candidate, Robert Kenyon, could beat Labour and Mr Burnham.
“Robert Kenyon is the only candidate who can stop Andy Burnham. This is a two-horse race – nobody else comes close,” said the Reform leader.
Nigel Farage has said the Makerfield by-election is a ‘two-horse race’ and only Robert Kenyon can stop Andy Burnham
Mr Musk backed Restore Britain when it was launched last year by Mr Lowe, stating on X: “It will win. It must win. To Save Britain.”
The owner of SpaceX has been prolific in his criticism of Labour on his X platform, claiming “civil war is inevitable” weeks into Sir Keir Starmer’s election victory in July 2024.
He also claimed Britain was a “tyrannical police state”, branded Sir Keir “two-tier Keir” over the policing of far-Right protests and warned that the UK was going “full Stalin” by tweaking inheritance tax rules for farmers.
Mr Musk has also called for the Prime Minister to be imprisoned over the state’s response to child sexual exploitation and called Jess Phillips, the former safeguarding minister, a “rape genocide apologist”.
However, Mr Musk was forced into retreat by Sir Keir and his ministers after a huge backlash when his AI chatbot Grok was exposed for allowing degrading deepfake imagery to flood his social network.
The billionaire was forced to block the chatbot’s ability to generate non-consensual sexualised images of real people and share them on X in countries where it was illegal.