READ MORE: Restore activists at 'white supremacy summit' with neo-NazisREAD MORE: SARAH VINE: Kemi and Nigel must put aside their egosSee more Daily Mail on Google - save us as a Preferred SourceBy MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT Published: 21:24 BST, 13 June 2026 | Updated: 21:54 BST, 13 June 2026
Does anyone in the Makerfield constituency really want to vote for a hopeless party whose members hob-nob with actual fascists and neo-Nazis? Yet this, apparently, is what a significant number of people are preparing to do.Let us hope the revelations we publish today, about the company the Restore Britain party has been keeping, will change their minds.Reform UK’s Nigel Farage has, to his credit, always steered firmly away from any association with the creepy, undemocratic and bigoted types who sometimes try to hang around the fringes of patriotic politics. It is one of the main reasons for his continuing success.Restore, by contrast, has not – since its very recent foundation – been especially fussy about attracting the support of fanatics. It is hard to see what good purpose the existence of the Restore Party serves, or will ever serve. Yet polls from the Makerfield by-election suggest that Restore is winning just enough votes to snatch victory from Reform and hand it to the Leftist Red Hope, Andy Burnham. Well, what good will that do for Britain?Voting for Restore rather than Reform will send no message, do no good and help no worthwhile cause. Greater Manchester mayor and Labour candidate Andy Burnham pictured on Saturday ahead of delivering a speech on apprenticeships, ahead of the Makerfield by-election Pictured: Rupert Lowe, formerly of Reform UK and current leader of Restore BritainIt was by treating a vote as an airy, irresponsible gesture that so many British patriots and conservatives managed to put Sir Keir Starmer in Downing Street in 2024, with an enormous majority. Who, after the experience of Starmerism, now thinks a Tory government would have been worse than what we have?Many of those who took part in this spasm are among those who now regard the Starmer government with horror and dislike. How often do they consider their own part in making Sir Keir the Prime Minister, and in making Rachel Reeves Chancellor? Of course, the Tories were hard to support and had done many foolish things. But what logic or reason would lead a sensible person to conclude that the best way to deal with that would be to elect an incompetent and rapacious Left-wing government?Likewise, what could possibly justify denying a victory in Makerfield to Reform when such a victory is within reach?This is not partisanship, just intelligent tactics. We have argued here many times that the Right must vote wisely at the next general election, to avoid another such perverse result. If, in 2024, conservative-minded citizens had viewed the ballot as a serious, thoughtful duty, we would all now be much better off in countless ways.This week, the same arguments run in favour of a Reform vote in Makerfield. The Tories cannot win there, but Nigel Farage’s party can and indeed almost certainly will – if only voters are responsible. At one of the most important by-elections in modern history, the people of Makerfield will on Thursday choose between helping Labour’s Left install an even more Left-wing leader or delivering an important political victory to a fast-reviving Right.Reform UK is the only sensible way to vote. To support the disreputable Restore, in these circumstances, would be absurd and disastrous, and also plain wrong.
