In light of my piece published this morning on Rupert Lowe's Restore Britain and its profoundly racist and toxic views, this opinion poll's findings are worth noting:
Lowe gets 10% support.
Some of that came from Farage.
Some from the Tories.
Together, these three toxic parties have 48% support.
Do not doubt that fascism is possible in this country.
Politics in the UK is now about the quite literal fate of millions.
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Eugenics is the story of British history. It was the foundation of Empire. I see its presence all the time. It doesn’t just disappear. The question is how deep is this fascism and is there enough momentum to resist it? I have hope that the non-fascist leaning Brits will oppose it because it looks very much like that fascism is going to rise. Unfortunately only struggles bring progress.
Rupert Lowe?
Corrected.
I could kick myself for that oine. How many times have I read and even written his name and then blinded myself to it? Hey, ho.
Richard,
The first sentence above still says Robert!
Everyone here knows his proper name
None of us spottted the error
Last night on Channel 4 news, I watched a piece about a young person who needed a mental health intervention who did not get one at the time he needed it.
I do not think the person was born here and may have been an immigrant. He did not sound English.
The point I am making is this: who chooses these cases to shove them into our living rooms in the evening?
To the 40+ per cent watching this who are of a fascist disposition, this interview was a gift from the gods of hate.
All I could think of was ‘Why could they have not found an English guy to highlight this issue?’.
The fact that I am thinking like this is indicative of the times we are living in. It is certainly – I assure you – not indicative of me.
Two interesting points.
1 – Given this fascist party has only just arrived on the scene, I’m surprised they got 10% in the poll. It’s not like Lowe is even that well known as fascists go. Were people reminded of this party when the poll was taken? Some may well have thought, without knowing anything about the party, “Restore Britain, that sounds good, I’d vote for them.” Unless of course, it is the hardcore that don’t believe that Farage and the Tories are fascist enough.
2 – The Greens on 20% – that should be big news.
But yes, that 48%, or close to it, has been a figure that Reform and the Tories have been getting for some time in polls.
The threat of fascism is now very real, and it is very different in the way it operates politically, from the old Fascists, like the National Front and British Movement in the 70s. The new fascism wrap up their rascism in a “I’m not a racist, but…” way. Backed by 40-50 years of relentless racism from the right wing media, led by the likes of the Daily Mail, it’s now a battle for the hearts and minds of Britain.
Hate or care, what do people want?
But let’s be under no illusions, the fascists, in whatever form, if they get power, will destroy the country. For a start, the economy will go under, once those millions being deported begin. And once they remove all human rights legislation I doubt whether many of our traditional allies and friends will have much to do with us, especially once the brown stuff hits the fan in Northern Ireland – imagine the EU closing the border to us for everything. And then we will have massive inflation, workers rights will go, and wages will collapse, house prices will collapse, the NHS will collapse, the country will be asset stripped, etc, etc, and climate change will be allowed to destroy what’s left.
Anyone voting for hate, needs to know what the future holds for you.
I gather that Lowe has been heavily social media promoted to very targeted audiences. You and I are not in them. It is thought Musk may be funding this.
I think that some of this awful news might be explained as a reaction to the slow, inevitable, collapse of ‘the way things are’ and the simple expedient of blaming ‘The Other’. In truth, we all need to be honest about the changes we all perceive, albeit dimly and incoherently, that are happening right now and re-learn the ethos of co-operation and working together. This is a good essay, Richard, https://adrianlambert.substack.com/p/collapse-and-the-consensus-trance
I like Lambert’s idea of the consensus trance and his conclusions – I think he is probably on the right track, and his essay is worth anyone’s time to read.
I will take a read.
I was watching a speech made by Suella Braverman at a Reform conference. The audience was mostly late middle-aged and older. It was sad to see, especially given how obsessed the older generations in this country seem to be about WW2. It feels like the majority of support for fascism comes from people who don’t see themselves as fascist, and therefore don’t recognise it until it’s goosestepping down their street. These are people who call themselves decent, implying that others aren’t, and use words like ‘British Values’, without being able to define what those fabled values are. Fascism is born in the middle class, and enforced by left behind, angry young men with nowhere else to go. I can understand the angry young men, but I don’t understand the older generation who bring it all about.
Undoubtedly there is a clear and present danger of fascism – not sure about the poll though. Most people wont have heard about Lowe’s party yet.
I think they have….Musk is funding it with target audiences. You may not be amongst them.
Not to diminish the obvious threat from these odious far right idiots but most polls in the UK are entirely unreliable.
More on this here:
https://substack.com/@politicalsatirical/p-186395511
My reading of the poll is slightly different. I think a large swathe of the electorate is desperate, looking for scapegoats and willing to support parties who are not fit or ready for government if they are willing to target the right scapegoats. Most Reform or Restore Britain voters are not dyed in the wool fascists and are salvageable but they need to be convinced that powerless people arriving on dinghies are not the cause of low pay, insecure work, crumbling public services and housing precarity.
Dare I say it though, and it pains me as a Green voter to say this, but my party trades in scapegoats too. Granted, targeting the “1%” has a grain of truth in it in a way that targeting immigrants doesn’t but blame isn’t policy. Us Greens are just as susceptible to voting for a party that isn’t prepared for government and many of my fellow travellers are enticed by scapegoat arguments as Reform or Restore Britain voters, powered by the same desperation.
Defeat of Lowe and Farage requires much closer scrutiny of their flip flopping (e.g. last year Farage wanted to lift the two child benefit cap, now he wants to restore it) and the Greens becoming a lot better at doing policy.
Could Rupert Lowe split the Reform vote ?
Yes
But he could also drag the whole debate further right.
That may be the intent. If Musk is backing Lowe, perhaps he is concerned that Farage is becoming too mainstream.
Apology for asking if Rupert Lowe could split Reform’s vote. I hadn’t read https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2026/02/16/post-peak-farage/ where you make the same point but much more substantially.
The granular targeting of voters online, is grossly underestimated.
This was all perfected a decade ago, by Cambridge Analytica et al, using African elections as testing grounds, then both USA swing states in 2016, and Brexit referendum here in the UK, for further development. We weren’t paying attention at the time.
Between them, Musk and Zuckerberg and a few other techbros, have our opinions in their techbro hands, and they play us for dummies.
It CAN happen here, but it isn’t inevitable.
Agreed
But we may not see it, nonetheless
That is all I am saying
Their adverts are not in my inbox
We desperately need to get all foreign money out of UK politics, and preferably prohibit all donations other than from tax-paying UK-resident individuals, and cap those. But the current government seems not to give a toss, despite donations to Deform far outstripping those to Labour. They’re colluding in their own destruction.
As I’ve probably posted before, my eldest sister lives in mid Wales. As Clerk to the local council, she was stunned at the last election to be receiving totally different FaceBook posts to her council members. She votes Plaid, and is a socialist. The Tories were all getting very right wing memes, the LibDems a variety, she got a lot of bots opposing Plaid. Granular, indeed. She also gets none of the pro-pylon PR that many in the Epynt area are currently getting. It is that widespread and targeted.
Precisely.
We do not see what they get.
Don’t forget to check the weighting issue: many, if not most, polls on Scottish Independence are manipulated by a number of pollsters using the results of the 2014 referendum to reduce the pro-independence public response. If it happens regularly to this day in Scottish Polls, you can expect it to happen in English/UK polls too. It’s all part of the undermining of democracy.
Agreed.
Just out of interest I looked at Lowe’s party’s Facebook page – the responses from his followers are chilling.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1831341270681521
Worrying.
There is a risk of getting a rather right-leaning government. However, when you look at the statistics of support for different parties, there is at least the reassurance that while there are significant numbers who would vote for the right, the majority generally vote for left-leaning parties (at least if you include Labour in that classification).
If anything, the age split starts to look clearer, and the latest YouGov polling data shows how divided intentions are between more than the usual 2 parties.
Reform down to 24%, with Labour on 19, Conservatives on 18, Greens on 17 and Lib Dems on 13. Such a split vote means there’s a lot of scope for the lead to change.
Meanwhile, a plurality of under-50’s intend to vote Green, and it’s only over-50’s that lean Reform. No age bracket prefers Labour on average at the moment but their support is more consistent between age groups. If you look at 18-25s, nearing 3/4 reject Labour, Tories AND Reform, instead preferring mainly Greens then Lib Dems. This bodes well for how vote shares may swing over time.
The appearance of Deform and Destroy maybe a recent phenomenon in terms of formal political entities however, one must remember we have had over a century of right wing domination of the almost all forms of communication (press, radio, tv and lately the internet). This when taken together with cosy cross party neoliberal politics of the HoC and the almost complete lack of any leadership coming from the Labour Party in the last 40 years, is it any wonder we now have a large ‘alienated’ section of the population! Did the poll include Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?
Answer to the last, I do not know.