Nigel Farage may regret overlooking the threat posed by Rupert Lowe’s breakaway outfit, which – noisily supported by Elon Musk – is now third in the Makerfield by-election polls, writes John Rentoul.
Farage's Fear of a Split
Why is Nigel Farage so scared of his shadow? His party is fighting a by-election against a Labour candidate who, if he wins, is likely to become prime minister. This is Farage’s chance to change the course of history: if Reform’s Robert Kenyon can beat Andy Burnham, the Labour government might go into a tailspin. Yet Farage spent his time yesterday attacking a tiny party that is even more anti-immigration than he is, and accusing Elon Musk of trying to “split the right” by supporting it.
Rupert Lowe’s party, Restore, has only one MP – Lowe himself – elected in Great Yarmouth on Farage’s coattails, and has almost no visibility in the mainstream media except when Farage attacks it or Musk supports it. Most normal people could be forgiven for knowing little about Restore, yet another party with a “Re-” name wanting to return to a mythical past, including Reform and Reclaim, Lawrence Fox’s outfit.
The Algorithm Election
But Restore is running a candidate in the Makerfield by-election, Rebecca Shepherd – and, a few days ago, the first opinion poll in the constituency, by Survation, suggested that she was in third place, with a surprisingly high 7 per cent of the vote. Well, surprisingly high to me, because I am not a follower of Lowe on Facebook. Indeed, I use Facebook so rarely that I have just had to go through a multifactor security rigmarole just to get onto it to check that Lowe has 1.2 million followers. But I am aware that, for many of those 1.2 million people, Facebook is where politics happens, unmediated by the likes of me. For this partly hidden political subculture, one that appeals to many of the same people who are attracted to Farage, the algorithm is the mediator.
I am more aware of Musk, the owner of X, which I still call Twitter and which I still use, because it is possible to screen him out most of the time. He has been carrying on a running feud with Farage ever since Musk, who clearly knows almost nothing about British politics, took Lowe’s side in last year’s bust-up.
Polling and Influence
Scarlett Maguire, the pollster, says that Restore and Lowe often come up unprompted in focus groups. She points out that Lowe has twice as many followers on Facebook than the prime minister. So, although the sample size of the Makerfield poll was small, it was big enough to confirm the shape of the race as a contest between Labour and Reform, with Restore a significant player potentially able to decide the outcome. If, as Farage fears, Restore “splits the right”, it could take enough votes from Reform to hand the seat to Labour. This is a more serious threat to Kenyon than the Green vote (3 per cent in that poll) is to Burnham.
No wonder Farage is so touchy. He has always reacted to Lowe with a vehemence that I thought was out of proportion and counterproductive, right from the original falling-out that led to Lowe’s expulsion.
Farage's Missteps
I am told that Farage and his aides marched into the Daily Mail offices a year ago to complain about the interview with the newspaper in which Lowe said Farage was unfit to be prime minister. The expulsion itself made sense. Farage is canny enough to know that he has to police his right flank, drawing a line between Reform and the criminal rabble-rouser Tommy Robinson and the Enoch Powellite policies of Lowe. Lowe – who wants to force the NHS to employ British nationals rather than foreigners, and to abolish the asylum system – has said that Robinson deserves “to be given the credit for the things he’s done right”.
But the ferocity of Farage’s response risks giving Lowe more attention outside the twilight world of Facebook. Just as his wild claim that it was the Russians who leaked his £5 million personal gift from Christopher Harborne, the crypto billionaire, only drew more attention to it and to his indefensible secrecy about it.
Irony of the Algorithm
It would be ironic if, in an “algorithm election”, Farage’s misjudged response to Lowe fed the beasts of X and Facebook to boost support for Restore just enough to clear the path for Burnham to return to Westminster. Burnham will claim that he has proved that Labour can beat Reform, when it may be that Farage will have defeated himself.
