With his hapless candidate for the Makerfield by-election, Robert Kenyon, increasingly proving himself to be an embarrassing liability, Nigel Farage has another problem in his rear-view mirror: his even more right wing rival, Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain, is quietly building a massive war chest.
Filings at the Electoral Commission, after Lowe finally registered his fledgling outlet as a political party, revealed that it was sitting on £2,597,825.88.
The financial statement follows Restore’s official registration as a party on March 20. Its net worth, reported after accounting for liabilities of £722,672, is a cool £1,875,153.88.
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The source of Restore’s riches is a mystery, though, as the Commission said the party will only have to report donations made after its registration date as a party.
A spokesperson for the Commission said: “When a party applies to register, if either the total value of the party’s assets or total amount of the party’s liabilities are more than £500, it must make a statement of their assets and liabilities to us as part of its application. This would include any cash accumulated through donations prior to registration unless already spent. This provides transparency on the party’s overall financial situation at the time of their application to register.”
Under the rules, donations and loans made to political parties above £11,180 must be reported and are published by the Commission on a quarterly basis. The upcoming publication covering Q1 donations (January to March of this year) will be the first reporting period in which Restore Britain would have been required to disclose any donations that exceeded the threshold.
Lowe initially registered Restore Britain as a company with Companies House in July 2025, rather like Farage did with Reform. There were about 15 weeks between July 2025 and March 2026, suggesting Lowe’s party bagged an impressive average of £137,000 per week in takings.
Farage, however, is still well ahead on the money stakes, at least for now. Reform has accumulated a mind-boggling £42million so far from its backers.
Meanwhile, Lowe is in a funk after his candidate for Makerfield, local businesswoman Rebecca Shepherd, was omitted from the BBC’s Question Time special, posting on, inevitably, X: “This is the most blatant example of BBC bias I have ever witnessed – it is scandalous.
“They had the irrelevant Lib Dems and Tories, along with the Greens. We will outpoll all of them combined, easily. Ask yourself. Why is the rotten establishment so desperate to censor Restore Britain?”
YouGov’s latest national polling, published this week, put Restore Britain on 3%, compared to the Conservatives’ 18%, Greens’ 15% and Lib Dems’ 13%.
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