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Restore Britain received its latest high-profile endorsement last week when former Chelsea captain John Terry replied \u201c100% yes\u201d to an Instagram post by party founder Rupert Lowe wanting to \u201cban foreigners from claiming benefits\u201d, \u201cremove migrants who are incapable of financially supporting themselves\u201d and \u201cput our own people first\u201d.<\/p>\n
Lowe, the Great Yarmouth MP, set up Restore Britain last year as what he called a \u201cpolitical movement\u201d after he was suspended by Reform UK<\/a>. It was then formally launched as a political party in February. Despite being just a few months old, the party is polling at 4%, according to YouGov<\/a>.<\/p>\n It might have been \u201cconceived as a pressure group\u201d, said LBC<\/a>, but Lowe has since \u201cstepped up his ambitions and appears willing to challenge his old party for the space on the right\u201d.<\/p>\n What are its policies?<\/p>\n Curbing immigration is a key Restore policy. Its official website<\/a> says: \u201cMass immigration has been a disaster for Britain. It has left us poorer, less safe, and less culturally and socially cohesive.\u201d<\/p>\n It plans to \u201creverse mass immigration\u201d by deporting all illegal migrants and introducing a \u201cred list\u201d of countries that \u201cface far stricter security checks, limited visa categories, and higher barriers to entry\u201d. Restore would use tents, not hotels, to house \u201cso-called asylum seekers\u201d before abolishing the asylum system altogether. It would end benefits for those on indefinite leave to remain, \u201cdeport rape gang collaborators\u201d and foreign criminals, and end election campaigning in foreign languages.<\/p>\n On tax and benefits, it promises to \u201creward the nation\u2019s grafters\u201d by scrapping IR35 for freelancers, abolishing inheritance tax, establishing the lowest corporation tax in Europe, and getting \u201cable-bodied Britons on benefits back to work\u201d.<\/p>\n It proposes a \u201cBritain First energy security strategy\u201d, which would mean repealing net zero goals<\/a>, requiring developers to fund local infrastructure before building housing, ending hosepipe bans for good and automating the London Tube.<\/p>\n Restore wants to scrap foreign aid, rearm Britain by spending more on defence and end diversity and inclusivity programmes within the Armed Forces.<\/p>\n It would \u201cdefund the rotten BBC\u201d, \u201cstrengthen the teaching of our Christian heritage\u201d within national curriculum history modules, ban the burqa, restrict halal and kosher slaughter, and repeal the Online Safety Act<\/a>.<\/p>\n Perhaps most controversially, Restore would hold a binding referendum on restoring the death penalty<\/a> in a bid to \u201cmake Britain safe again\u201d.<\/p>\n What impact could it have on Reform UK?<\/p>\n While it shares many of the same policies as Nigel Farage\u2019s Reform UK, Lowe\u2019s party has sought to present itself as the true voice of the right.<\/p>\n Despite lacking the name recognition of a leader like Farage, Restore has successfully used social media to amplify its anti-immigration rhetoric. Helped in no small part by the backing of X owner Elon Musk, Lowe is now one of the most followed UK politicians on social media.<\/p>\n By adopting a decentralised structure, effectively serving as an umbrella for local far-right political partners, Restore hopes to show up the top-down approach of Reform. Other far-right figures such as former EDL leader Tommy Robinson and former Reform deputy leader Ben Habib have also rallied behind the new party.<\/p>\n Such a force \u201ccould cost Reform a number of seats \u2013 and potentially even power, in a wafer-thin general election result \u2013 by splitting support among those drawn to hard-right anti-immigration populism\u201d, said The Guardian<\/a>.<\/p>\n Is it just a flash in the pan?<\/p>\n