TALKING to Rupert Lowe, the former Reform UK now Independent MP for Great Yarmouth, it is clear he has one passion: to stop Great Britain going to the dogs. Like many citizens, he has strong, deeply held convictions that will be applauded by some but will shock others with his unashamedly right-wing intensity.
Lowe, also a former Member of the European Parliament (MEP), founded Restore Britain last month to galvanise the electorate. It is a movement, not yet a party but a much-needed antidote to uniparty politics. Many of his former Reform UK colleagues have joined, deserting Nigel Farage, 61, who many consider has sold out but is still the hot tip for next prime minister.
Restore Britain’s backbone is rooted in Direct Democracy, a political system based on referenda, designed so that the people make decisions on laws and policies rather than deferring to their elected representatives. If the last five years has taught us anything, it is that governments appear corrupt, lining their own pockets, are hostile to the electorate and intent on a controlling, intrusive, nanny state. Sovereignty has become a dirty word.
Lowe, a 67-year-old father of four, agrees wholeheartedly with these sentiments. Below, he gives his uncensored vision for a rejuvenated, prosperous Britain.
‘The problem we’ve got is that the state has got too big and it’s now become the enemy of the people. Labour – none of them have ever had a job or run a business or basically done anything real, they’ve just climbed up the greasy pole.
‘What Rachel Reeves is doing is extremely dangerous. We’re teetering on the edge of a major downturn. It’s very easy for them to increase taxes on the decent hard-working sector of Britain. What it’s doing slowly is hollowing out the private sector and enriching the public sector through increased salaries and huge pensions, which are much bigger than the private sector. Whether that’s by design or by default, I don’t know. I suspect maybe a mix of the two. I think we can all see that the state doesn’t function. When, and if, our economy does turn down then our democracy will be challenged hugely.
‘MPs, who are supposed to be omnipotent and supposed to be like mini-gods representing their constituents, have been undermined by the system which has empowered the permanent secretaries to the detriment of the MPs. We have to wise up, get real, shed the state and basically celebrate the private sector. Statism doesn’t work. We have to get rid of it and understand that the public sector is an unproductive rucksack on the back of productive Britain.
‘As a result, it’s left us very weak but, in the end, we have the best raw material and that’s the people, so release the people. You must place trust in the people; we’ve got the best people in the world.
‘We’ve got to clean the arteries of Britain and cut the size of the state. It’s not going to be easy, and it’s not going to be fun, and I don’t think anybody can promise that we’re going to march straight to the promised land because we’re not. We’re probably going to have to put on a hair shirt for a bit while we rebuild ourselves, but if we want our country back and want our way of life, our culture and our Christian ethics back, we’re going to have to do that.
‘The state is supposed to serve the public, but it doesn’t, it’s become oppressive. That’s the European model. That’s the difference between Anglo-Saxon economies and what I call Catholic Europe. Charlemagne’s Europe was full of rules and regulation and oppression of the people, whereas we broke free from that. I always say that the essence of difference between us and Europe is that in Europe, unless the law tells you that you can do something, you assume you can’t. Whereas here, unless the law tells us you can’t do something we assume we can. One’s based on common law and the other’s based on Code Napoléon and Catholic Europe.
‘You have to found your economy on the family, on the proper units of cohesion. People can then bring children up properly and the key is parental responsibility, which I think has now gone. The family has been completely eroded, and the state hasn’t supported it. The state, through the tax codes should support it. If you want a model, look what President Lee Kuan Yew did in Singapore. He encouraged and rewarded families for having children. He incentivised having families that stayed together. He basically rewarded people who worked hard, innovated, took risk and generated wealth. And as a result of that, Singapore, which used to have a tiny economy compared with us, has a GDP per capita that is twice ours. They have done an incredible job.
‘We’ve gone badly wrong. Our constitution has arguably been undermined. We were a high-trust society because we had a common heritage. We’ve lost that because immigration has diluted this high-trust society. We’ve brought in people who don’t speak English, who have different creeds, different cultures, different cults and they haven’t integrated. I entirely blame the postwar elites for the absolute mess we now find ourselves in.
‘I’ve never talked about repatriation. I have talked about mass deportation of those people arriving here illegally, those people living here illegally. I personally think border control are breaking the law by helping bring them on shore, giving them water and putting them in migrant hotels. In this country if you aid and abet someone who’s doing something illegal, you’re breaking the law yourself. The whole thing has gone haywire.
‘Those immigrants who are in our prisons who have committed crime should be sent home to serve their sentence in their own country because we don’t need them. Particularly as we are releasing dangerous criminals early as our prisons are overcrowded. There are about 10,500 of them. We know that because of questions we’ve been asking in parliament.
‘Those people who arrive here illegally should be sent to a Scottish or an English island, put in a tented camp until they ask to go home. It wouldn’t take long if you put them on a Scottish island where the brand of midge is rather better than the English midge. The British taxpayer doesn’t owe them anything, they haven’t contributed anything to our society.
‘The other thing that needs looking at is this indefinite right to remain for those people who get here illegally and lurk around because our state is so inefficient and doesn’t deport them as soon as they get here. Sooner or later, they get what’s called indefinite right to remain, which is a load of poppycock. They should all be forced to make a contribution to the country before they have any right to live here.
‘I think the judiciary has gone badly off the rails. It is no longer what we all think it used to be. It’s gone off the rails in the same way our schools have been undermined by this progressive (woke) lunacy. It’s the same. If you look at the Backbench Book that they give to guide magistrates, it has Stonewall philosophy embedded within it. You’ve got DEI and LBGTQ+ and all this other nonsense embedded into our judiciary.
‘We have a two-tier police system and a two-tier judiciary. You only have to look at the rape gangs where the establishment just didn’t want to address the issue and walked along the other side of the road looking the other way. We’ve identified that this is probably going on across 100 cities across Britain. Of course, it’s happening in London (despite Sadiq Khan declining to answer the question). It’s still happening.
‘I want to live in a society where we celebrate success, where we celebrate difference, and where we celebrate those who are contributing. If people don’t sign up to the Restore Britian movement, which I’m setting up as a lightning rod for them, then I can’t see myself remaining in this country beyond 2029, after the next election. I think it will turn in on itself and become a very nasty place to live.’
Find out more about Restore Britain, how to donate and become member, here.
