It’s easy to poke fun at the Left for its propensity for factionalism, infighting, purity tests, and the narcissism of small differences. Now that Rupert Lowe has launched his own party, Restore Britain, it’s the Right’s turn for a ribbing. The death of the Labour-Tory duopoly — which received its lowest ever vote share at the last election — has caused a feeding frenzy. The Right has not yet provided anything quite so entertaining as the Your Party farce, but it doesn’t seem far off.

There are, amidst all the noise, two major forces on the British Right. The Conservative Party is a parliamentary rump skating by on Boomer inertia; meanwhile, Reform UK is preparing to do to the Tories what Labour once did to the Liberals.

But there are other stars in this increasingly crowded constellation. There, in the distance, is Laurence Fox’s Reclaim, which boasted an MP of its own, Andrew Bridgen, for a few months in 2023 but which seems now to have vanished into the ether. Further away still is Andrew Tate’s Bruv — Britain Restoring Underlying Values — which is not currently registered with the Electoral Commission. There is Ukip, or what remains of it, limping ever onward. The SDP, a curious fossil of the golden age of Left-wing splitting, has come a long way since Roy Jenkins: at the last election, it made a pact with Reform UK.

Reform has so far spawned two splinter groups, each under the aegis of one of Nigel Farage’s spurned former allies (remember: he did not fall out with them; they fell out with him). Ben Habib’s Advance UK has so far frolicked about the fringes without making much of a dent on national discourse. Lowe’s new venture will garner more attention. He is a sitting MP with a skill for attracting headlines. He also has a prominent supporter with deep pockets in Elon Musk, and a crack squadron of young men who are good at making online edits. The video announcing the launch of Restore Britain — which until now had lingered in limbo as a non-party “pressure group” — shows Lowe wearing wellies on his farm, speaking sternly to camera.

Reform, Advance, Restore: it all brings to mind the People’s Front of Judaea and the Judaean People’s Front. “Millions must go,” rings Restore’s slogan: Immigrantes eunt domus.

Lowe’s supporters will point to some ideological differences between him and Farage, such as on burqa bans and “remigration”. The Reform leader has tended to approach the subject of mass deportations with considerable caution, describing the policy in 2024 as a “political impossibility”. Restore’s supporters are already making hay of this. There is, however, a basic fact that they will have to confront. The Right-wing challengers which have seriously kept Tories awake at night — Ukip, the Brexit Party, and now Reform — all had one thing in common: Nigel Farage. Perhaps he knows what he’s doing.

The launch of Restore would appear to be bad news for Reform and good news for the Labour-Tory duopoly. It will put pressure on Farage to move Rightwards and risk alienating sectors of the electorate. There is a risk, too — as silly as it sounds — that the similarity between the names “Restore” and “Reform” will confuse voters at the ballot box. The whole spectacle will also create an impression, one Farage has done little to redress, that Reform is a ramshackle operation which can’t hold itself together.

First Past the Post brutally punishes vote-splitting — something the Left now seems to grasp better than the Right. Habib has proposed that Advance UK and Restore join forces, a move supported by Musk. Advance UK is standing in this month’s Gorton and Denton by-election with a high-profile local candidate who could take some votes away from Matt Goodwin. Your Party and George Galloway’s outfit, meanwhile, are keeping a prudent distance to make room for the Greens.

But in every crisis lies opportunity. Lowe presents Farage with a chance to clean house. A few days ago, “reactionary Catholic Zoomer” Connor Tomlinson was advising his hundred thousand followers to tidy up their social media profiles and apply to become Reform candidates. This would have proved a serious problem for Farage, given that some of the positions held by Tomlinson and his supporters are far to the Right of his own. Perhaps he needn’t worry now that they have thrown their weight behind Restore. The would-be hijackers of Reform UK have found a vehicle of their own.

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Samuel Rubinstein is a writer and historian.

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