Mail on Sunday attacks Restore as split right creates headache for UK papers

Some titles that once backed the Tories now ‘flirting with Farage’ as they try to gauge where readers stand

It was a Mail on Sunday headline with all the ferocity usually reserved for general elections, directed squarely at a political opponent. But in this case, the traditionally Conservative-supporting title was not targeting Labour.

The party in its crosshairs was Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain, the vehemently rightwing outfit that regards Nigel Farage’s Reform UK as too weak on deporting migrants.

“Restore Activists at ‘White Supremacy Summit’,” declared the front page. It claimed supporters canvassing for Lowe’s party before this week’s Makerfield byelection had attended an event that hosted calls for “a white-only Europe”.

Unusually, the Mail on Sunday’s vehemently anti-Restore editorial was displayed prominently on its app through much of the weekend. “Anyone who really cares about Britain won’t vote Restore,” it stated, asking voters to back Reform.

Restore Britain described the story about the summit as “totally irrelevant” and a “hit piece”.

The next day, however, the Daily Mail followed up with another blow. “Restore is the ‘new home for neo-Nazis’”, it said, citing Lowe’s claim over the weekend that if the far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson, wanted to join Restore, it was “up to him”.

A Reform source supplied the killer quote used for the headline.