How Restore’s Rupert Lowe is rivalling Nigel Farage’s place in Maga America

Each week more than 10 million people – mostly young men and boys – tune in to the Joe Rogan Experience, the most popular podcast in the world. On YouTube, Rogan has 21 million subscribers. To date, he has amassed a total of more than six billion views on the video-streaming platform to listen to his blend of interview, politics, comedy and criticism of the mainstream media. He could therefore attract some of the biggest names on the right in politics – but why would he host the relatively obscure MP for Great Yarmouth, Rupert Lowe? Shorts The answer is an extraordinary flirtation between the Make America Great Again movement in the US – and its billionaire backers such as Elon Musk – and hard-right splinter party Restore Britain, founded by that Norfolk MP, Lowe. Lowe meets Musk Lowe, a multimillionaire businessman, was elected Reform MP for Great Yarmouth in 2024, but was kicked out of the party after an almighty bust-up with Nigel Farage in which the Norfolk MP was accused of – and denies – bullying allegations. As a result he founded Restore. Now, despite being his party’s only MP, he is being talked up by the right-wing movement in America, rivalling Farage for their affections. Rogan hosted him earlier this month. In a two-hour episode recorded in Texas, Lowe expounded his views on hard-right talking points from migration to Covid-19 vaccines. A few days later, the British MP apparently met Elon Musk – the richest man on Earth, who for weeks has been enthusiastically promoting Lowe and Restore on his social media platform X. Lowe’s US trip shows how Restore is cultivating links with Donald Trump’s Maga movement (both Rogan and Musk endorsed Trump in the 2024 presidential election, although have since cooled somewhat to his presidency). It was not Lowe’s first foray into the so-called “Magaverse”. Last December, he also appeared on conservative commentator Tucker Carlson’s YouTube show . Meanwhile. at the beginning of his interview, Rogan revealed that his meeting with the Restore chief had been brokered by a trio of Magaverse stalwarts: Musk, Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, and Bret Weinstein, an American professor of evolutionary biology who has been accused of spreading Covid misinformation (Lowe appeared on Weinstein’s own podcast a few weeks earlier). Lowe campaigning during the Makerfield by-election. His Restore Britain party won 6.8 per cent of the vote (Photo: Jon Super/AP) Liz Truss and the Magaverse Engaging with the Magaverse could unlock multiple benefits for Lowe and Restore. The colossal global following of figures such as Rogan, Musk and Carlson could help the party access British voters who no longer follow mainstream British media. If he wanted to, Musk could pour vast amounts of money into Restore via the British-based offshoot of X (though there is no suggestion that he has or that Lowe has solicited such donations). Lowe is just the latest in a long line of British right-wing politicians who have sought to ingratiate themselves in US conservative circles. Farage makes much of his friendship with Trump and was a one-time Fox News pundit, while Liz Truss has tried to find a place on the Maga speaking circuit. In a sign of the continuing link between the populist right in both countries, Truss has just helped bring America’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) to the UK for the first time in its history. Lowe and others on the British right think they have a lot to learn from America. Ben Habib, a friend of his, and the leader of another hard-right party, Advance UK (Habib is in the process of winding it down to clear the way for Restore), told The i Paper that it was “important to link up with the US on the right”. He added: “The changes that we wish to make in this country, from a governance perspective, are very similar to the changes that Trump says he wants to make. Borders, deportation, unpicking a hijacked judiciary, ditching net zero, there’s a great deal of commonality.” Social media boost Beyond inspiration, for a small political party such as Restore there are a lot of practical benefits to social media. The first relates to political reach. In terms of national representation, Restore remain a political minnow. In Parliament, the party has just one MP, Lowe. At council level, it has about 20 councillors (a further 10 are aligned with Restore via its local affiliate, Great Yarmouth First). Lacking the foot soldiers to get his message out on the ground, the party leader has leaned heavily on the reach he can achieve through social media. On X, Lowe has 883,000 followers. It makes him one of the most followed MPs on the platform (he has twice as many as Kemi Badenoch’s 402,000 and more than Andy Burnham’s 675000 (which is up from 643,000 since he became Prime Minister). But the Restore chief still lags behind Sir Keir Starmer and Farage, on 2.5 million and 2.3 million respectively. Lowe has then been able to further amplify his message through the support he gets from Musk, who has 240 million followers and frequently shares his posts. Appearing on Rogan’s podcast similarly extends Lowe’s reach. While the brash Rogan seems a quintessentially American figure, he has a huge following in the UK – although precise audience figures are not available, his show is consistently the most listened to podcast in this country. During his conversation with Rogan, Lowe was explicit about the support he had received from the American right, and his desire for more. “We need your help at the moment,” he said. Revealing he was “going to see Elon on Sunday”, Lowe added that the multi-billionaire had been “an incredible support for us”. “He’s been helping us because Britain’s in bad shape.” Elon Musk and Donald Trump watch a test flight of SpaceX’s Starship rocket in 2024. British hard-right leaders have been keen to cultivate relations with both the Maga movement and the tech tycoon (Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty) Dunblane gaffe In general, American right-wing figures such as Musk and Trump are extremely unpopular with the British public. Many UK voters would also be repelled by much of what Lowe said to Rogan – as well as describing the Dunblane massacre as “one murder” (16 children and their teacher were killed in the 1996 school shooting), Lowe boasted during the interview that he was a “pureblood” because he hadn’t received a Covid vaccine. However, such views and associations land very differently with Lowe’s online base. Louis O’Geran of think-tank More in Common said that Restore supporters tended to be “outliers” in terms of their attitudes, particularly the segment which is highly active online. “They’re the only segment that have a positive view of Donald Trump,” said O’Geran. “They’re a lot closer to the American right.” For example, “they’re far more likely to kind of have quite reactionary views” on issues such as women’s rights, abortion and gay marriage. O’Geran added: “For Restore Britain specifically, we’ve started to notice in our polling and in our focus groups, there are kind of two people who might consider voting for them. On the one hand, you have people who are very online… who listen to stuff like Joe Rogan, they like Donald Trump, they like figures on the online right. Much higher approval of people like Tommy Robinson. And it tends to skew a little bit younger. “Now this is kind of Restore’s base. This base is small and they’re not representative, and in many ways they’re outliers in their social values. But on X, they’re kind of the mainstream.” Of course, this is far from the whole story behind Rupert Lowe’s relative rise. This online cohort would not be enough to fully account for the creditable 6.8 per cent of the vote which Restore achieved in its first by-election in Makerfield last month. O’Geran said Restore support was bulked out by a “wider group of people who are just kind of disillusioned with Reform” – particularly over the current financial questions dogging Farage – “and they don’t necessarily know that Restore Britain is seen as more right-wing. “They’re people who are active in local [Facebook] community groups. You see a lot of content about Channel crossings and stuff like that, but they’re not on these ethno-nationalist pages on X.” The financial prize As well as reach, another potential draw to the Maga movement for British hard-right politicians is the vast financial resources it could offer. Since Musk started intervening in British politics in 2024, there has been speculation that he could bankroll a party on the right. While as a foreign citizen, Musk would not be able to donate directly, the British branch of X could legally make political donations. In December 2024, Reform’s billionaire treasurer, Nick Candy, said the party would be “very interested” in a donation from Musk. Candy and Farage subsequently met Musk at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. However, no money materialised and weeks later Musk publicly turned on Farage and transferred his support to Lowe. It is not clear what Lowe spoke about with Musk during his apparent meeting with him this month – The i Paper contacted Lowe and Restore to ask what had been discussed, but did not receive a response. There is no suggestion he asked the tech billionaire to financially support Restore. Outshining Farage While there are practical benefits Restore can gain from its leader cultivating his transatlantic links, perhaps the most gratifying prize of all is if he succeeds in outshining his arch-enemy Farage in the Magaverse firmament. There is no love lost between the two men: Farage kicked Lowe out of Reform over bullying allegations, and has since seen Restore become a thorn in his side. For his own part, Lowe has always denied the bullying allegations (an independent investigation commissioned by Reform found “credible evidence” of harassment) and accuses Farage of trying to end his career and get him jailed by reporting him to the police. With many US conservatives getting all their information about British politics from X, some Washington politicos reportedly think Lowe will be a major power broker after the next general election.