I’m sceptical of the Restore Britain party but there is something else that has made me even more sceptical?
Whilst I would happily vote for Reform or even a reformed Tory Party should my first choice, the Social Democratic Party, not be available on the ballot paper, I will not touch the Restore Britain party with a metaphorical bargepole. Sure I like their championing of a robust border policy, getting the issue of remigration into public dialogue (public dialogue is always good), the party’s scepticism about multiculturalism and their hostility towards some of the more ‘challenging’ bits of the Islamic community in Britain along with their leader’s willingness to donate his Parliamentary salary to local good causes in his constituency. However it’s not enough to make me either support them, join them or vote for them. Here’s a few reasons why my vote will not be going Restore’s way.
This is a party that’s in a mess. It has nothing from what I can gather in the way of seriously thought out policies, I have found little evidence that Restore have enough detailed policies to consider it to be a sensible party with the abilities to tackle what are now very serious problems with both the British economy and our society.
They don’t seem to have considered how their aims will be carried out, how much they will cost, how to counter opposition to them and how to avoid the second order consequences of such policies. Reform also have a similar thinness of policy detail problem but with Restore it seems to be much worse. I had a look at their pubs policy just as one example and yes, reducing tax is a great idea, go for it. The problem is these tax cuts need to be paid for and I don’t see, at least so far, how Restore will make up the shortfall to the exchequer for all these tax cuts to one sector of the economy? If they ever get into government Restore might not be able to fulfil their promises to the hospitality trade because of the masses of red ink written in the national account books. If tax cuts are to be a policy then cutting taxes on fuel may have a bigger and broader impact on economic activity than giving tax breaks to the hospitality sector.
It might be the case that whatever is eye-catching is going to be the policy order of the day and we saw that with Restore’s free hospital parking policy that doesn’t seem to have been all that well thought out for all sorts of reasons, This policy might have all sorts of second order effects none of them good (I believe that others have pointed out the difficulty of policing these free car parks especially in inner cities where parking is scarce).
It’s astonishing to see such a dearth of detailed policy with equally detailed information about costs and benefits and challenges when it comes to Restore. Restore do at least have some sort of policy positions where we can see what the aims are, but from what I’ve seen they are a bit light on how these aims will be achieved and how much they will cost. If Restore was a think tank then it would be one where there’s not been much thinking going on in that tank. Instead of well thought out policies that won’t be destroyed on first contact with the economy, a political enemy or with the Civil Service or legislation, or as Harold Macmillan once said ‘events, dear boy, events’, we get vibes, slogans and memes. I’ll not be wasting my vote on that.
Then there are Restore’s supporters who make an awful lot of noise on social media and some, not all of them I need to say, who to a certain extent, because of their intemperate language or hero worship of the leader Rupert Lowe MP or because they are shall we say tin foil hat adjacent, a public relations nightmare for the Restore Britain party. Come election time the left media will absolutely eviscerate them and paint ALL restore supporters as extreme. I’m not sure how Restore are vetting the backgrounds of their members and in particular those who claim to speak in Restore’s name but some of them may be a bit off-putting for the average politically apathetic voter and could quite easily be characterised, rightly or wrongly, as extreme or might be able to be portrayed as extreme.
As anyone who has studied British politics knows, avowed extremists have never done all that well in elections unless there is a particular local issue where the extremists are, for once, in tune with the electorate. For example there has never been a Communist elected to Parliament since the 1930’s and then mostly only elected in particular areas that had suffered badly from the Great Depression. Also the neo-Nazi British National Party (BNP) managed to gain many seats in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham earlier this century because there was genuine local concern about migration and the alleged less than equitable allocation of public resources by the Labour council. In both these cases neither the Communists nor the BNP managed to turn local victories into national success.
It is somewhat astonishing looking back that the Communists didn’t do better than they did in the 1930’s as they had the almost perfect campaigning tool, the failure of the post WWI capitalist economic order that they could have legitimately exploited. If the Commies couldn’t successfully exploit the Great Depression and do so across the country then that says something about the British character. The British public like it or not don’t generally vote for extremists and if a candidate or party or those who have become associated with it has extremists as supporters, and neither will I.
Vibes based campaigning has its place, we all like a laugh at a good hard hitting meme or a good slogan, but when it’s all vibes and no substance then that’s a different matter. When various members of the party make statements without thinking of how it will be perceived out there among the public or make broad statements without much nuance, or talk up isolationism with regards to the Iran conflict merely because it makes the party’s base cheer, then that’s not a party that anyone could trust to govern sensibly.
Then there is the cult of personality that has grown up around the leader Rupert Lowe MP and once you get a cult of personality going on in a political party then you’ve got a group of people who will not think carefully or critically or with any sense of intellectual detachment in the party, you just get those who publicly adore the leader and won’t have anything said against them. They are not going tell the leader that they might be wrong in something or point out second order consequences to new policies or draw attention to possible negative outcomes to something the leader says or does. They are going to tell the leader what the leader wants to hear so wrapped up are they in the adoration of the leader.
We saw this cult of personality in operation in British politics to some extent with some of the hard core Thatcherites during her administrations. The Leader could do no wrong in their eyes but when along came a policy that was shot full of holes, the Community Charge/Poll Tax, there were not enough people around her willing to say ‘no’ or to make suggestions to modify a policy that saw the poor pay the same tax as the wealthy. Margaret Thatcher might have lasted until 1992 and left the Tory leadership on her own terms and in triumph had this disastrous policy been halted or amended. It was the Poll Tax and its injustices that finally showed Thatcher to be an electoral burden on the Tories but it could have been so much different. She would still have had the pro-Europeans to battle with but she might have prevailed against them had she not had the millstone of the Poll Tax around her neck. Whatever the nature of the personality cult* whether it be from the Left or the Right or somewhere in-between, a personality cult is definitely not going to get my vote.
There are of course some good things to say about Restore but even then they have to be tempered with criticism. They’ve helped to make the previously unsayable sayable again, but only helped, they didn’t do it on their own. Restore has not been shy of criticising the failures of multiculturalism nor Britain’s migration and asylum systems. Failing systems and ideologies do require them to be politically challenged and Restore has done this. Restore have not, as some people might claim, played any major part above that which I have mentioned in shifting the Overton Window, that window was already shifting towards Islamo-scepticism and scepticism about multiculturalism and other more Right-coded issues long before Restore came along.
Restore did bring much more attention to the issue of the Islamic Rape Gangs and for that they should be praised, but even here there are valid criticisms to be had. Rupert Lowe’s non-statutory and ‘independent’ inquiry, for which it is alleged by some that £800,000 was raised by the public in good faith, shows the appetite among the public for strong government action on both the perpetrators of what is called Group Based Sexual Exploitation and those who assisted them. This inquiry has aired testimony about the horrific levels of rape and child sexual abuse carried out by gangs the majority of whose members are Islamic. What’s been aired is utterly astounding in its awfulness. The number of women and children raped by these gangs over the course of decades is of a similar level, 100,000+, to the number of German women raped by the Soviet Red Army when they took Berlin in 1945. I believe that some good has been done by these accounts given to Lowe’s inquiry. These testimonies needed to be heard by a wider public and that in turn has raised awareness of this problem, a problem that is continuing.
However, that doesn’t mean that this inquiry is beyond criticism and criticism has come from a long standing campaigner against the rape gangs. When Restore is getting criticism from the likes of veteran anti-CSE campaigner Raja Miah for how the inquiry was run it’s probably wise to sit up listen and not dismiss his views out of hand.
He has some choice words to say about Restore, it’s CSE inquiry and the uses that the data gained from this inquiry might be put and the legal implications of some of Rupert Lowe’s proposed actions. One such action proposed by those surrounding Restore is that Mr Lowe might name people alleged to be involved in some way with the rape gangs or in covering them up, in Parliament where Mr Lowe would be legally protected by the doctrine of Parliamentary Privilege. Mr Miah says that there’s questions to be asked about whether there’s been the use of data from the inquiry for party political purposes. He’s also concerned that the ad hoc naming in the Commons of people allegedly involved in these gangs or those who may have turned a blind eye to them, might utterly destroy any future criminal inquiry into these individuals.
I’m leaning towards agreement with Mr Miah on these matters. The cross sharing of information between the inquiry and Restore does look more than a little iffy and at least raises ethical questions about data handling and who is using what data for what purpose? Yes there is a need for justice for those who have suffered at the hands of the rape gangs and that should come, but you might not get that by shouting out names in the Commons. There’s the possibility that naming people in the Commons as abusers or associates or conspirators of abusers could backfire badly on the very people, the survivors, who need justice the most. As Mr Miah said it could contaminate the evidence record (and in my view this also poisons the potential Jury pool (which is many of us)) therefore rendering any trials of those connected to the rape gangs, untenable. The guilty might go free so Restore can do some grandstanding in the Commons and I’m definitely not voting for that.
Mr Miah said:
"It makes no difference to me how many Restore Britain supporters wish to deflect onto me, question my motives or whether I should be deported. Nor do I care whether people choose to stop supporting me. I never started this journey to be popular. The evidence is clear. The independent Rape Gang Inquiry is not independent. And what it is now being used for is not what it was promised for. Anyone who has read the two articles I released this week or watched the YouTube analysis will know that I have neither attacked Rupert Lowe nor engaged in any attack on Restore Britain. My position has been straightforward. Rupert Lowe must take steps to separate the Rape Gang Inquiry CIC from the activities of Restore Britain. Pursuit of the objectives of a political party is not always the same as pursuit of justice for survivors of the rape gangs. In declaring his intention to use parliamentary privilege to name names and pursue private prosecutions using the Rape Gang Inquiry's resources, Rupert Lowe has made a choice. Legal experts have already identified why those prosecutions could fail. Naming individuals under parliamentary privilege, amplified nationally overnight, contaminates the evidential record. A defence barrister does not need to prove specific jurors were influenced. Demonstrating that a fair trial can no longer be guaranteed is sufficient. Judges have granted abuse of process applications on exactly those grounds before. There is a second problem. The Rape Gang Inquiry CIC was incorporated to carry out four specific activities. Pursuing private prosecutions is not among them. A company acting beyond its filed powers is acting ultra vires. That is a second abuse of process argument that could end the prosecution before a single piece of evidence is heard. And there is a third. The Crown Prosecution Service has the power to take over any private prosecution and discontinue it. No court hearing required. If the CPS determines the prosecution has been contaminated by political context, they can end it. The money spent up to that point is gone. If any one of those three mechanisms is triggered, the perpetrators walk free. The political moment, however, is guaranteed. The headlines are guaranteed. The founding narrative of Restore Britain is guaranteed. The survivors get nothing but another betrayal. That is not justice. That is politics. And the survivors of the rape gangs deserve better than to have their pain used as the founding story of someone else's political ambition. Raja Miah MBE"
I’m gobsmacked at reading Mr Miah’s piece. Also the nasty online monstering that Mr Miah is getting from some Restore Britain supporters because he’s criticised Restore and their ‘Glorious Leader’ is looking like corroborative evidence for my views on the party and its members.
It looks like Restore is some sort of amateur hour outfit. Not only is it alleged that the rape gang inquiry was not truly independent but is mixed in intimately with a political party, with the data from the inquiry might be being used for what might be a party political purpose. That don’t look right to me. The division between the party and the inquiry should not have been permeable and I can also see this permeability being somewhat of a data protection nightmare. Then there is what Mr Miah said about the interests of the survivors of the rape gangs having different objectives to that of a political party. Mr Miah said the survivors are looking for justice whereas the party is looking for party political advantage. This is looking murkier and murkier.
However in my mind what is the greatest of the murkiness is what is claimed to be Lowe’s plan to name people in Parliament. This sort of thing might give the Restore base a tingling feeling and will no doubt bring forth cheers for Mr Lowe from his supporters, but it might, as Mr Miah says, poison the evidence well and ensure that those who may well be guilty of CSE offences or who have covered them up, escape any form of justice. Restore Britain might be on the cusp of doing a whole host of stupid and counterproductive things merely for clicks and applause. That’s stupid and shallow of Restore and there’s no way would I vote for a party so stupid and shallow, Britain’s problems need and deserve better than this in the party that tackles them.
I was initially sceptical of the Restore Britain party despite liking some of Mr Lowe’s comments. Having seen what Restore have become and observed them for quite a while now it seems that my scepticism might have been justified. ‘Run fast and break things’ might have been a good strategy for new businesses using the internet to create new markets but it’s not the way to run a political party. Britain is in a seriously dire state all round and it’s going to take some exceptionally and seriously special politicians to turn things round and undo so much of the damage that has been done to British society, it’s economy and its Constitution, since the turn of the century at least. I don’t see Restore producing such politicians, at least I’ve seen no sign of it being able to so far.
Restore might turn themselves around, might not do stupid things for clicks and giggles, might have one day a proper set of well thought out policies to put to the voter, might not make oafish and un-nuanced statements, might not do stuff that might bugger up future criminal trials and might not still be a personality cult. Until then I’ll continue to be sceptical of Restore and definitely won’t be voting for them.
- There are still those out there who are followers of the cult of personality that built up around the likes of Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro, Josef Stalin, Dictator of the Soviet Union and Enver Hoxha the Dictator of Albania and a man said to be more paranoid than Stalin himself. I’ve met some of those people as I’ve travelled through life and so often they’ve been unable to critically think about the objects of their reverence and no amount of facts or debate will change their minds. Personality cults are bad, OK.
Links
Original post from Raja Miah on X regarding actions by the Restore Britain party
https://x.com/recusant_raja/status/2050501484735774990
Restore Britain’s hospitality trade policy paper. Heavy on tax cuts and bright ideas but light on how these tax cuts would be paid for.
Rapes in Berlin at the end of WWII