LONDON — Nigel Farage knows he has a Restore Britain problem. Striking a pact with his rival is not a silver bullet. New polling shared with POLITICO shows a deal between the right-wing Reform UK and a further-right splinter group led by Rupert Lowe would put off some of the former Conservative voters Reform UK is trying to attract.
Farage has made replacing the Conservatives as the main party on the right of British politics his aim — but the Restore outfit Lowe formed after being kicked out of Farage’s team is sapping away support from Reform. Earlier this month, Lowe offered to put his differences with Farage aside to form a pact with Reform, and Reform officials have been taking Lowe’s public offer of a pact seriously. But Lowe’s deal comes with conditions — he advocates mass deportations, including of women and children, a ban on halal and kosher slaughter, a referendum on the death penalty, and the exclusion of Conservative ministers from a future Cabinet.
Luke Tryl, U.K. director of More in Common, which conducted polling on right-wing pacts earlier this month, said a deal with Restore would be “more likely to damage than bolster Reform’s fragile voter coalition.” “Some Reform voters are open to Lowe’s messages, but they risk deterring the wider pool of voters that Reform would need to win an election. His think tank’s survey of 2,128 adults conducted between Aug. 7 and Aug. 10 found that a Farage tie-up with Restore would trigger a significant drop off in support from respondents who voted Conservative in 2024 but are now considering voting Reform. That metric drops from 45 percent open to Reform to 39 percent.
Some Reform voters are also put off by the prospect of a Restore pact. The poll suggests 93 percent of voters who backed Farage at the last general election would do so again without a Restore pact, but the figure fell to 83 percent with the prospect of a Lowe team-up. Overall, the polling suggests that a Restore-pact would reduce those willing to consider voting Reform from 32 percent to 30 percent.
Restore is only hovering at around 4 percent in voting intention polling, but the survey found up to 20 percent of Brits would “consider” voting Restore — including half of those who voted Reform at the last general election in 2024. And Restore is particularly popular with those who didn’t vote at all in 2024 with some 53 percent of non-voters in the survey saying they are considering backing Restore. The first-past-the-post system used in British general elections — where only one MP will represent each area — means a fracture on the political spectrum can hand the more united flank of politics the keys to Downing Street.
Yet there are also dangers for Farage in not doing a pact with Restore. Farage himself has conceded that Restore has the potential to do Reform “great harm” by splitting the right-wing vote. The prospect of a Reform-Restore pact appears, for now to be on ice.
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