defect to Restore,<\/a> and their affiliation was updated on the council\u2019s website.<\/p>\nBut it has since been reverted to say independent.<\/p>\n
Mrs Merryweather revealed this week that she had received a phone call from the national branch of Restore informing her that a vetting process had taken place and that, due to their previous affiliation with Labour, she and her husband were not permitted.<\/p>\n
The couple, who have been on Bassetlaw District Council since 2015, represented Labour until 2024, when they joined the Bassetlaw Independents group.<\/p>\n
Now, because of their affiliation with Restore, they\u2019ll have to sit as independent Independents, rather than being part of the group they were part of until a fortnight ago.<\/p>\n
Mrs Merryweather told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: \u201cIt is what it is. They have a vetting process and I can\u2019t knock that. l\u2019ll still be backing them. We\u2019re staying independent because we\u2019re in the middle of sorting out what we can be known as. We wanted to know if we could be Independent Restore but have been told we can\u2019t as that would confuse people.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pair had originally defected from Labour to independent after becoming disillusioned with the party\u2019s policies.<\/p>\n
Mrs Merryweather said: \u201cI didn\u2019t believe in what was happening within Labour. I didn\u2019t like Keir Starmer and that he was going to be voted in as our next leader. He wasn\u2019t my choice, and then starting doing things like hitting the pensioners and things like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy husband moved not long after me because of the pensioners and the WASPI women. We didn\u2019t agree with it. We did get asked if we wanted to join Conservative or Reform and they were quite nice about it, but I said no.\u201d<\/p>\n
Restore Britain was founded in mid-2025 by businessman and former Southampton FC chairman Rupert Lowe as a political movement and became a registered political party in March.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Rupert Lowe founded Restore Britain in 2025(Image: Getty)<\/p>\n
As of Wednesday, April 29, it sat at three per cent in YouGov voting intention polls.<\/p>\n
Mrs Merryweather said: \u201cI was treading water with Independent because it meant I could vote the way I wanted to for my constituents. And then Restore Britain came along and I started listening to Rupert Lowe and actually, at least 98 per cent of what he had to say, I agreed with. I thought: This is my kind of politics.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did keep looking at it because obviously I\u2019m not anti-Muslim. I never have been. But I think we should be able to live alongside each other, not dictate to each other. As daft as it is, I know there\u2019s been this big thing about the (St George\u2019s) cross but at the end of the day the cross on our British flag has been there since well before I were born.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy should we take it down? After all, it is Britain and that\u2019s what the flag stands for. Why should somebody be able to come along and tell me that I\u2019ve got to stop doing that, or that I\u2019m offending them because I\u2019m eating pork? I\u2019m sorry but this is stuff I\u2019ve done for 64 years and I\u2019m not about to change it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Restore endorses policies such as the mass deportations of millions of illegal immigrants, banning Kosher and Halal slaughter, holding a referendum on the reinstatement of the death penalty, legalising pepper spray and abolishing inheritance tax.<\/p>\n
On her reasons for wanting to join, Mrs Merryweather added: \u201cIf I\u2019m honest, I don\u2019t like the fact we\u2019re getting so many illegal immigrants coming in that we\u2019re not vetting. We don\u2019t know what they\u2019ve done and it\u2019s showing because we\u2019re having so much more crime. It\u2019s quite scary.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of things. If someone wants to call me racist, let them do it. I\u2019ve never been racist in my life but I\u2019m also not going to be dictated to in my life either, not when it\u2019s things I\u2019ve been brought up to believe in.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think what\u2019s happened is in political correctness, we\u2019ve done things to be okay with different religions, but I think now they\u2019re starting to kick back and say: hang on a minute we\u2019re not satisfied with just this, we want this as well. That\u2019s the trouble at the moment. They\u2019re asking for too much and it\u2019s taking away our birthrights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mrs Merryweather, who has worked for the NHS<\/a> for 22 years, said that she and her husband had become members of Restore by signing up as members of the public, and she had thought that it would make them automatically eligible as councillors.<\/p>\nShe said she believes that the national party was informed of their defection by somebody else, which subsequently led to her receiving a phone call advising her of the process.<\/p>\n
A week later she was told that they could not stand for Restore.<\/p>\n
But Mrs Merryweather says she has \u201cno animosity\u201d against Restore, still wants to work with the party and will attend meetings.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cIf anyone contacts me to help them, I am letting them know that I have joined Restore. I\u2019ll still fight for my constituents. I don\u2019t care whether they\u2019re Labour, Conservative. I was elected to look after them and that\u2019s what I do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Deborah Merryweather said that she agrees with ’98 per cent’ of what Restore Britain’s Rupert Lowe says 06:00,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,31,2312,1139,14,1095],"class_list":{"0":"post-26979","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-labour-party","10":"tag-nhs","11":"tag-nottinghamshire","12":"tag-politics","13":"tag-worksop"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116503581972620676","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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