Restore Britain was launched as a pressure group on 30 June 2025 by Rupert Lowe, the MP for Great Yarmouth, after his suspension from Reform UK over allegations of threatening behaviour. It was announced as a political party on 13 February 2026 and registered with the Electoral Commission on 20 March 2026. Lowe is its sole MP, defending a majority of 1,426 while subject to an ongoing Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme investigation into his conduct that the High Court declined to block.
The party's membership claims have been inconsistent. On 16 February 2026 it claimed 50,000 members. Two days later Lowe said 70,000. The following month the party claimed 123,000 without providing evidence. By June 2026 the reported figure was 96,000. No independent verification of any figure has been published.
On immigration the central commitment is the removal of every illegal migrant in the United Kingdom, estimated by the party at between 1.8 and 2 million people. The mass deportation policy paper runs to 133 pages, authored by Harrison Pitt with contributions credited to figures including Carl Benjamin and GB News contributors. It is the most developed document the party has produced. The proposed enforcement model requires between 150,000 and 200,000 enforced removals per year alongside roughly 500,000 voluntary departures driven by hostile environment measures. The annual enforced removal rate sits well above any prior UK enforcement total. The party's own paper accepts the United Kingdom would need to leave the ECHR and the Refugee Convention before the programme could legally operate.
In June 2026, Lowe published "The Rape Gang Inquiry Report," a crowd funded unofficial report claiming at least 250,000 white girls had been subjected to "repeated rape, gang rape, trafficking, torture, pregnancy, forced Islamic conversion and lifelong trauma," while acknowledging imprecision in the figure. The report was not commissioned by or connected to the national statutory inquiry into grooming gangs announced by the government.
On Europe the party would withdraw simultaneously from the European Convention on Human Rights, the 1951 Refugee Convention and the Human Rights Act 1998, and would repeal the Equality Act 2010. The proposed alternative is a Great Clarification Act allowing Parliament to override Strasbourg judgments by majority vote. This is constitutionally larger than the policy it would enable and would require Labour or Conservative cooperation that neither has offered.
On climate the party rejects the 2050 net zero target and proposes domestic oil, gas and nuclear. The rejection is total. No transition support for workers, communities or capital displaced by the abandonment has been published.
On welfare the party would condition benefit eligibility on community service and restrict PIP and sickness support to UK citizens only. The administrative path for delivering this at scale has not been specified.
On governance the party brands itself as a single issue vanguard on immigration and constitutional reform, but the policy platform extends well beyond. Published positions include BBC defunding, banning the burqa and niqab, abolishing kosher and halal slaughter, holding a referendum on the death penalty, and restoring Christian principles as constitutional framing. The single issue branding is no longer accurate. The platform is comprehensive cultural conservatism with mass deportation as its leading edge.
The party's support base has drawn scrutiny. In April 2026, The Times reported that "prominent neo-fascist leaders" had backed the party. Hope not Hate documented support from the leadership of Patriotic Alternative, a British neo-fascist organisation, as well as former officials of the British Democratic Party, the British National Party and For Britain. Georgios Samaras, an assistant professor at King's College London, told Al Jazeera that "Rupert Lowe and Restore Britain are the expressions of neo-Nazism in this country" without "being openly, symbolically, and stylistically Nazi." Lowe has stated indifference to being described as far right and has disputed that the party is racist or bigoted. Susan Hall, the leader of the Conservative group on the London Assembly, sat on the initial advisory board.
At the May 2026 local elections, Restore Britain's local affiliate, Great Yarmouth First, won 10 council seats. The party also attracted defections: seven Kent County councillors, making Restore the third largest party on the council, plus councillors from Leicestershire and Warwickshire. Ben Habib, leader of the rival far right party Advance UK, considered a merger before Advance announced it would deregister in June 2026.
In October 2025, Lowe posted on social media that he had spotted a boat approaching the coast near Great Yarmouth and declared: "If these are illegal migrants, I will be using every tool at my disposal to ensure these individuals are deported." Great Yarmouth is 110 miles from Dover where small boat crossings arrive. The boat contained a party of charity volunteers rowing from Land's End to John O'Groats to raise money for a motor neurone disease charity. Lowe said he would "make no apologies over being vigilant" and donated £1,000.
The silence is revealing. No detailed fiscal package. No education policy beyond rejection of higher education expansion. No defence spending commitment. No position on Scottish or Welsh devolution. For a party promising to remake the constitutional settlement of the United Kingdom, the absence of stated positions on devolution is notable.
This is not a single issue vanguard. This is a manifesto for ending things: net zero, the ECHR, BBC public funding, the Equality Act, the asylum system, kosher and halal slaughter, the welfare safety net as it applies to non citizens. Restore Britain has not shown how the removals would be staffed, how the legal exit would be negotiated, how the cultural restoration would be administered, or how a party endorsed by neo-fascist organisations intends to distance itself from their agenda while implementing policies they support. On the record so far, the rhetoric is the policy. The rowing boat is the metaphor.