Why is Restore resorting to offence archaeology?

When a party that was born exclusively through online momentum, by people who largely made their name online, starts attacking a public figure who has almost no previous online presence for his online posting, it’s fair to say something very strange is going on. Yet this is precisely what Restore Britain has been doing to Robert Kenyon, the Reform UK candidate in the Makerfield by-election.

It won’t have shocked anyone that the biggest by-election of the century has featured its fair share of dirty campaigning tactics. Most infamously, this has included accusations of various ‘-isms’ directed at Rob Kenyon for his decade-old tweets and social-media posts. Many on the right and even the left are tired of hearing about what candidates said years ago to the audience of 20 or so followers they probably had before they were in the public eye. After all, posting as a public figure is completely different from doing so as a private citizen.

What many might find surprising, however, is that Rupert Lowe’s Restore has been joining in on this incredibly woke line of attack.

Restore, until this by-election, was considered a very online party. This has been proven somewhat wrong over the course of two Saturdays, as activists have turned out in large numbers to canvas in support of the party’s candidate. Still, a lot of Restore’s activism is done online, surprisingly more so through Facebook than X, formerly Twitter, whose trillionaire owner, Elon Musk, backs Restore seemingly wholeheartedly.

Looking at Restore on X, the posts are a constant stream of ankle-biting attacks on Reform, typically on Reform’s supposedly weak immigration stance – such as a clip from over a year ago of Nigel Farage saying mass deportations are a political impossibility. Restore’s main Facebook page has exactly the same posts, with less engagement. But Facebook is far more local than X, so there are also branch pages, the most followed being Makerfield’s.

The Restore Britain Makerfield Facebook page consists largely of posts about what’s going on with the by-election campaign. It contains about the only proof we have that Rebecca Shepherd, Restore’s parliamentary candidate, is even alive, as she has largely been kept away from the media. It also posts the latest party literature, usually attacking Reform.

One leaflet stands out. It starts with the phrase, ‘As a woman’, which you’d usually expect to be followed by some feminist nonsense you’d hear in the average Guardian article. Instead, we’re treated to a few paragraphs on women feeling unsafe almost exclusively because of foreign men in Makerfield.

This may be something you’d expect to hear from a right-wing, anti-immigration party. However, it appears the only non-foreign man Restore thinks women should fear in Makerfield is Rob Kenyon, who, the leaflet claims, has ‘made several offensive public comments about women’, using ‘vulgar, offensive sexual language’. At the bottom is Rebecca Shephard’s signature and photo.

Now, granted, this remark is seven paragraphs into a leaflet that almost no one will read. Still, it does indicate that Restore is happy to throw everything at damaging Reform, even though this tactic could so easily kneecap Restore.

It is by now common knowledge that Restore’s Makerfield campaign is targeting Reform UK households, especially those with placards outside. There is even word that, if a door is answered by a woman, Restore will focus the attack on Kenyon for his past posts about women.

What makes this particularly odd is that, while Rupert Lowe himself doesn’t appear to have posted anything in the past that would offend women specifically (you’d expect this, given he outsources his social-media content), it is no secret that the activists in the alternative media network surrounding him have said things that are very offensive indeed.

The most obvious example is Carl Benjamin, who owns and runs the Lotus Eaters online magazine, whose YouTube videos on the by-election all carry a link directing viewers to join Restore. During his 2019 run for UKIP in the European Parliament elections, Benjamin was constantly asked by the media about his many past posts and videos that many would deem offensive – and not just those aimed at women. The most infamous example was his tweet saying, ‘I wouldn’t even rape you, @jessphillips’, directed at the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, sent three years earlier in 2016.

It is a very odd strategy for Restore to attack others for regrettable social-media posts when one of the leading promoters of the party is arguably the most famous case study in British political history of a candidate being attacked for past posts.

Another example is Restore’s campaign director, Charlie Downes, who has faced attacks from the right over a long X post that can be summarised as ‘Everything evil going on in England is deserved because the English are not Christian enough’, which presumably includes the rape gangs.

Most damaging of all have been the two frontpage splashes in the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday accusing Restore of being ‘the new home of neo-Nazis’ and ‘white supremacists’. Both articles cite numerous posts and even some offline activity from various Restore Britain activists, which makes them difficult to dismiss as simply smears, as some of those named by the Mail are claiming.

All of this begs the question: why has Restore gone down the route of attacking Reform’s candidate for his old social-media posts when it’s clear that Restore hasn’t got its own house in order in this department? It is either out of rank stupidity or possibly desperation.

We will see the results of this and Restore’s other tactics on 18 June. Though it has to be said, since Restore has been happy to attack others for their social-media pasts, I doubt there will be much sympathy for those in Restore whose young lives may now have been ruined by the Mail’s reporting.

Peter Simpson is a writer and co-host of the Wolves of Westminster podcast.