Yesterday was a busy day on the Right of British politics. Ben Habib and Rupert Lowe, both former Reform UK acolytes, launched their own projects, throwing into sharp relief the UK’s increasingly fracturing and antagonistic conservatism. But what do both projects hope to achieve?

Habib has launched “Advance UK”, which from first glance looks to have bigger problems than merely being confused with a prominent disability charity. Its launch video is a predictable culture wars montage. Footage of the devastation caused by Islamist terror attacks on British soil, small-boat migrants crossing the English Channel, BLM protesters dumping the statue of Edward Colston into a river, and Just Stop Oil demonstrators marching the streets all hammer home the idea that Britain is under attack. The former deputy leader of Reform UK has declared that his new party will take on Britain’s “quangocracy” and stand up for the restoration of parliamentary sovereignty. He has also stated that Advance UK will seek to officially register with the Electoral Commission if it gains 30,000 members.

As for Lowe, the darling of the Online Right, he has launched “Restore Britain”. He calls it “a movement for those who believe that we need to fundamentally change the way Britain is governed” and is at pains to say it is “not a political party” but a “policy platform”. It stands for: “Low tax, small state, slash immigration, protect British culture, restore Christian principles, carpet-bomb the cancer of wokery, fight lawfare, empower individual enterprise, and plenty more.” Much like his efforts as an MP so far, Restore Britain claims it will set up a Freedom of Information (FOI) taskforce to “expose government waste”.

Both projects share a commitment to, as Advance UK put it, “minimal Government intervention in people’s lives”, which feels out of place in an era where free-market libertarianism has become a fringe position. They both unsurprisingly believe in the protection of British culture, celebrating Britain’s Christian heritage, taking on the “woke”, and restoring equality before the law. Habib and Lowe both want to slash immigration, but they will need to offer serious plans to wean the country off cheap imported labour that depresses wages for British workers.

Many of Britain’s traditional working-class communities have been left to rot by Thatcherite neoliberal orthodoxy. This is something that Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, who also used to support a kind of Thatcherism, has cottoned on to. So much so that he has, for example, recently advocated for the nationalisation of Britain’s failing steel plants. A YouGov poll in April found that a clear majority of Britons supported nationalising British Steel and that they were nearly twice as likely to think that trade unions played a positive role in Britain as opposed to a negative one. Another survey back in October 2024 showed that several proposals designed to strengthen workers’ rights commanded public-majority support. Both Advance UK and Restore Britain offer precious little to an electorate on board with various forms of protectionism and state intervention.

Most of the British political Right is deeply tired of the Conservative Party, at least for now. But both Habib and Lowe show that there is also an anti-Reform strand emerging. The reality, however, is that beyond the online echo chambers, both men have limited name recognition compared to Farage and neither have his record of leading political parties — indeed movements — to national electoral success.

The more pragmatic elements of the anti-Tory Right who do not believe that Farage is “controlled opposition” understand that Reform UK is the political vehicle best positioned to shatter the Labour-Conservative establishment duopoly. And even more crucially, they are aware that, despite a ballooning deficit and welfare bill, small-state reheated Thatcherism is not the route to power.

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Dr Rakib Ehsan is a researcher specialising in British ethnic minority socio-political attitudes, with a particular focus on the effects of social integration and intergroup relations.

 

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