Unless you’re living under the proverbial rock, you’ll know that Andy Burnham won yesterday’s Makerfield by-election far more convincingly than the polls suggested. His 55 per cent of the vote was not only more than 20 points ahead of Reform, it was more than every other party’s vote combined – and that on a turnout of 59 per cent, up from 53 per cent in the 2024 election. That’s the first time since the SDP won the Greenwich by-election in 1987 that a by-election has seen higher turnout than the preceding general election.
There is no way to read this result other than as a huge personal triumph for Burnham – and, in parallel, a great disappointment to Reform in what was one of its key target seats. At the 2024 general election, Labour won with 45.2 per cent, with Reform second on 31.8 per cent. Yesterday was a giant leap backwards for Reform – especially when combined with the Tories’ sensational by-election win in Aberdeen South, the party’s first in Scotland for over 60 years.
Both those results are self-evidently enormously significant. But I want to concentrate on a more obscure aspect of Makerfield – the performance of a much smaller party which came nowhere near winning, but whose result should send a shiver down the spine of every JC reader.
If I told you that one party running in the by-election believed that the only true Brits are Christians and that those who aren’t Brits should “remigrate”, you might reasonably assume that that party was a tiny fringe outfit that might at best secure a few hundred votes from some unhinged racists.
But a party which believes just that secured 7 per cent of the vote in Makerfield. If it manages to maintain a similar level of support in coming months and years, it is going to have a real impact on election results more widely.
The party I am referring to is Restore Britain, which was founded in a fit of pique when Rupert Lowe, who was elected in 2024 as a Reform MP, fell out with Nigel Farage. But while its origins may lie in a tantrum, it should now be clear that it cannot be dismissed as only the plaything of a wealthy egomaniac. Restore Britain’s signature policy of mass deportations is gaining support from real voters. And not just in insignificant numbers.
Restore Britain talks about removing illegal immigrants and foreign nationals who break the law, as well as those who cannot speak English or who claim benefits. There will always be a certain level of support for such a populist – indeed, popular – approach. But while that is one aspect of its agenda, the intellectual foundations of its approach cast a far wider net.
Restore Britain is an avowedly ethno-nationalist party. That means defining Britishness – and thus the conditions in which non-Brits (a category that would include Jews) are tolerated when they live here –
on the basis of cultural or religious identity, rather than by existing law or civic belonging. That ethnic identity, the party’s ideologues make clear, should be homogenous.
According to Charlie Downes, the spokesman and campaigns director for Restore Britain, the character of that homogeneity is obvious: “Britain is a people defined by indigenous British ancestry and Christian faith." In other words, no matter how long any Jew – or Hindu, or Sikh, or Muslim or any other faith – may have lived here or for how many generations, we are not British and never can be. This is Restore Britain’s version of the Nazis’ "Blood and Soil" (Blut und Boden).
Restore Britain does not – yet – say Jews should be expelled. But if Britishness requires "indigenous British ancestry and Christian faith," then existing British citizens who do not meet that definition are merely here because we possess a piece of paper that has historically given us legal citizenship; we are not actually British, and so our right to live here is conditional.
Downes has made clear what comes next: “Remigration is a political and demographic necessity.” Remigration means that even those of us who hold the legal status of British citizenship should be encouraged (or in some instances compelled) to leave, because we dilute the homogeneity of the nation by our presence.
After January’s launch of the Reform Jewish Alliance he posted an image of Farage at the meeting with the comment: "MPs should serve their constituents and Britain's national interests, not foreign lobbies and minority advocacy groups."
We have been here before many times, although not significantly in Britain for many decades. At the moment, Restore Britain is able to punch above its electoral weight because it has the support of Elon Musk, and so Twitter gives it a huge push. It is also now an established presence on Facebook. It may be that it has reached its peak, but the more identity politics takes hold and the more groups like the Greens toy with antisemitism, the less likely that is.
The rise in antisemitism in the CST statistics is deeply concerning. The rise of Restore Britain is the political concomitant.
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