A very brief note on the Restore Britain debacle

Sir Timmy tubbs

It is quite rare for people to sustain a serious interest in politics and be willing to publicly engage in it; this is not normal behaviour in most British social circles, and though it is much more acceptable now than it was during the dark night of Millennial Kultur-Terror I am keen for no blood to be shed in this latest catastrophe. I have found it personally amusing to watch the ‘Classical Liberals’ who ‘can’t define race’ of 2018 repeat slogans they, way back then, publicly criticised, and even demand national political figures make themselves unelectable by doing the same. And yet hypocrisy is part of life’s rich tapestry, so I savour it as part of our rich human experience.

Camp men in suits flock to the established parties and quit them when they no longer serve their ambitions; I have no ill will to anyone doing this, but, as I think J’accuse has already clearly established, this latest project “Restore” is a disaster and I urge those involved to reconsider, for their careers’ sake if not for more noble motives.

Remigration is Inevitable

I try and avoid talking about politics long-form because I don’t think we really have the conditions for it in Britain; we are not permitted free and open debate or political organisation, do not have an ideologically varied (or even ideological in any sense) mainstream press, what exists outside of that is not up to much either and relatively unimportant, to the result that we have no, no matter how dreary, ‘educated opinion’ to structure ourselves around. In the national discourse you must think Britain is Bloody Brilliant or you’re assumed to be Russian; you have the freedom to Respect Britain’s Greatness because of our varied selection of curries, or because we abolished the slave trade, or perhaps something about church architecture and hedgerows, but that is about the extent of dissent available to most people.

The great advantage of this is that it is comically ridiculous and people who have no interest in public life whatsoever seldom believe a word of it. Unlike many European countries the incoherence of the British left means a single parliamentary victory could be used to suppress them without serious opposition; the method has already been tried and tested in the ‘get rid of Corbyn’ arc and one of the few things that could wreck this would be something that looks a lot like Restore.

The response to these practical concerns is that Twitter accounts with a few thousand followers should be leading public opinion. In that case we can look at their ideas on their own merits; I don’t think ‘personal liberty’ or ‘loose morals’ are to blame for England’s malaise, and claiming we are therefore collectively responsible for suffering at the hands of outsiders in our, unique in Western Europe, White industrial slums, is both ridiculous and unpleasant. But my first and most obvious complaint against Restore is that it is a ‘nationalist’ party whose members want it to be ‘more nationalist’.

I dislike petty nationalism and believe in One Europe, though I grudgingly accept this is a common form of politics in stagnating semi-authoritarian states on the periphery of that great continent. Pretending to be early 20^th century Polaks indigenous to their private bog is not a recipe for lasting success, but even so, a narrower platform may win an election and allow for meaningful improvements. The vagueness of the various Reform precursors show Farage, at least, has understood this, and he has at times expressed a willingness to destroy the rotten heart of unearned privilege that is, more than anything, the reason any ‘Cromwellian Restoration’ is an absurd fantasy.

But Restore’s endless appeals to Nationalism are odder still when neither the party’s leader nor its main spokesman appear to believe it, their one MP advocating a classic values-based inclusive society and the latter using non-denominational Christianity as sole criteria for citizenship. Because of the misjudgement of Elon Musk, Restore is simply a megaphone for various online accounts, whose success is measured by whether they can force people to commit to vague slogans (“Remigration”) that are defined differently by everyone who uses them; Laws or the average Italian using this word is saying something very different to Trump or Lowe, who think it is a snappy way of saying “enforcing existing immigration law”.

So anyone in Restore who believes that sort of thing is in effect trying to ‘infiltrate’ a hostile party, just as they would be were they to join Reform, Labour or the Liberal Democrats, only with a much smaller potential payoff. The difference, of course, as with Gerard Batten’s UKIP in 2018, is Restore is small and desperate enough to take them.

The Twitter discourse this week turned rather unpleasant, so I will humbly begin with a Godly Appeal for everyone concerned to stop this nonsense, to abandon the ‘Restore Britain’ plot, and make a short essay to try and understand why this clearly negative development has appeared.

What are the charges against Reform that make ‘starting a new party from scratch with someone no-one has ever heard of at the head of it’ appropriate? Put simply:

1. Reform do not associate with popular right-wing influencers like Tommy Robinson, one of the main issues leading to the split between Lowe and Farage,

2. Reform are squeakily pro-Israel and parrot US neoconservative foreign policy talking points (this is apparently not in contradiction with point one, despite TR being Britain’s only hardline Christian Zionist and hated by many of Restore’s online fans),

3. Reform are also part of a Muslim plot to take over Britain because of their former chairman and current London mayoral candidate (this is apparently not in contradiction with point 2),

4. Reform are not sufficiently ‘socially conservative’ (this is apparently not in contradiction with point 3).

5. Reform and specifically Nigel Farage are ‘controlled opposition’ working on behalf of one of the above groups or the British state.

Holding contrary beliefs at the same time can be a sign of great intelligence, though normally it is not. But the opinions of Restore supporters clash horribly with its public positions: Restore combines the immigration policy of Reform UK or the Tories, or even certain factions of the Labour Party, but with the certainty of electoral oblivion, an online aesthetic of Neogothic slop and AI pastorals, and, far more dangerously, social conservatism.

That brand of conservatism – it had a long history in Scotland, but not really south of the border – exists almost entirely amongst religious minorities. In many countries loud anti-gay politics is used as part of blackmail efforts to manage the closeted homosexuals who peddle it. I won’t stoop to claim this applies to anyone discussed here. But I would hazard a guess that most Restore supporters are of mixed Irish ancestry. This, on my mother’s side, is my background too (though my father is a Dutch Protestant Atheist), and I remember that small world quite well.

Unlike the ‘reactionary Catholic zoomers’, all converts of one form or another, likely from non-practicing backgrounds, I saw it firsthand. Though there were some advantages, namely the ritual solemnity around birth/marriage/death, it was certainly not right wing and not particularly moral. Catholics have voted Labour almost invariably except for Thatcher’s first victory in 1979 and during the Boris Johnson years. As to ‘social conservatism’ - anyone familiar with the status of ‘Catholic’ and ‘Anglican’ in their British stereotype would know that Catholicism here is the religion of the drunk and the louche. My Parish priest growing up, a man of genuine religion, with a far better grasp of both God and Man than any of the Restorers, was a heavy drinker who would slip off his dog collar when he visited the wine merchant and delivered rambling sermons about his favourite London hotel bars at Christmas. I suspect the RC-Zoomers know this, and for that reason make the nonsensical addition of Oliver Cromwell to their pantheon of ‘Restored Britain’.

I will give the Lotus Eaters and Mr Downes the benefit of the doubt and assume they know this, are familiar with the social reality of British Catholicism, and that this knowledge, rather than a desire to distance themselves from their Irish ancestry by adopting Eire’s national enemy as their hero, is why Oliver Cromwell features so heavily in their output.

The Restore version of Cromwell’s revolution is tied to calls for a Taliban-style moral reform. I assume it is obvious to everyone this will Not Work, and for disappointed true believers the predictable outcome is conversion to ‘Eastern Orthodoxy’ or Islam, not the noble faith as practiced in Bosnia or Iran, but of the rubber dinghy rapids variety. Their (covert, Lowe would kick them out immediately if he knew) interest in Jews feeds into this, and, as we shall see later on, becomes very amusing when we look into Rupert Lowe’s early political career and relation to his political mentor James “Jimmy” Goldsmith.

My point about conversion may sound exaggerated but, contrary to received opinion, most British Islamists are highly integrated, very keen to see White converts and have an opinion of Europe comparable to Downes’, of a great civilisation laid low by moral decay. Like Tommy Robinson fans when they see a black man in Union Flag sunglasses, presentable White youths repeating Islamist talking points gives them that warm universalist glow, and the prospect of escape from the tyranny of their Auntieocracy. Such a figure would do very well in a Muslim Party and could help break the current “progressive” coalition; if Downes or someone similar wants to do something of lasting value for the right I would suggest exactly this strategy.

I am quite neutral on questions of religious superiority but the moralistic tendency tends to appear once supernatural belief is dying; I would never assume someone’s personal beliefs, but suspect a man calling for a religious revival does so out of a desire to force others to change their behaviour, usually for twisted internal reasons, and not because he lives cheerfully in knowledge of a salvation outside of this world. I should prefer that they broke their shells and flew to Abraxas, but we can only expect so much of people.

Like petty nationalism, petty moralism is very common now, often as a front for sexual or social self-interest, and it is impossible to deny we live in a moralistic society. Our would-be reformers may not like those morals, but they are indeed there, and getting rid of them, even with the view to replace them with something else, requires an act of moral dissolution. Like so many of our problems stems from a lack of appreciation of the British eighteenth century, and, of even graver importance, the narrow circulation of the troubadour songs in the reading public. Peire Vidal and Guillaume IX both fought in the crusades and were uninterested in any sex that wasn’t adultery. But we are getting off topic now.

Cromwell was not a nationalist any more than he was a democrat, famously trying to unite England and the Netherlands into a Godly Republic. A Calvinist motivated by religious idealism, this was the religious background of my father’s side of the family down to the 1950s. Few Dutch Calvinists remain today – their Gods were Reason and The Bible, and this faith could not survive Historical Criticism, the positive side of the Protestant spirit transferring its energies to the new worlds of science and industry.

Once sincere belief failed, a moralistic political Calvinism took hold in the Netherlands, the auntie version of Calvin’s revolution that led to the monstrous oppression of the polder model. No equivalent movement ever arose in England, because we had no Calvinists left and their attempt at top-down moral reform under Big Ollie is still widely hated; but our own Protestant dissenters and moral reformers were almost exclusively of the left.

The great oppression of the Dutch spirit survived the end of sexual moralism but was eventually broken by the concerted efforts of that country’s Catholic minority, who, in total contrast to their English equivalents, argued in the language of a highly secular society against importing foreign people. The list includes early pioneer Hans Janmaat, and on the more liberal side both Pim Fortuyn and his pale imitation Geert Wilders. I think the Restorers would not be pleased by the historical progression of the Cromwellian Dream.

As to the revolutionary and military Cromwell, a man of Providence it is impossible not to admire; he is simply irrelevant. It would be comic to seriously compare Cromwell to any modern figure in British politics; both Hitler and Mussolini kept a portrait of him in their offices, Rupert Lowe has a newspaper cut-out of a fat man on a bike with the caption ‘public sector efficiency’.

I am in no position to make a ‘historical judgement’ on Cromwell but one thing which is obvious is he was a religious radical first and only reluctantly supported the radical politics of his backers. The postwar Marxist historians who have mostly formed contemporary opinion on him admitted this, but were still keen to play up his revolutionary democratic character. I have little authority to claim so can’t/shan’t argue it, but I suspect his refounding of the British state was adopted very late and under compulsion by an armed group of unpaid supporters. The Lotus Eaters and affiliated Restorers might see themselves in this role, but it is not a dynamic you can recreate in 21^st century Europe.

Anyway, I doubt most of them are seriously interested in this, and Cromwell-Catholicism is more of a Nazbol gimmick aimed at pissing off both the pro-Irish Labour base and High Tory Royalists, if it is anything more than filler on video edits between King Alfred and Cecil Rhodes.

Now, should Restore come out in favour of abolishing the monarchy and seizing the royal and aristocratic estates without recompense (Cromwell half-arsed this one but at least tried), I will drop all my criticisms and serve them to the bitter end. Of course, they won’t; so long as private property is off limits, Britain will continue to operate in a narrow political range that you can either accept and act within or abstain from and criticise from outside. It strikes me many of the loud online supporters of Restore, if they are to be useful at all, should take the second option.

Finally, and delicately, the more conspiratorial side of Restore is worth considering and this is where we may take up the second of the four criticisms of Reform. There is a perception on the British right, in my view an entirely correct one, that ‘the establishment’ (which potentially includes anyone with any experience of government or the state bureaucracy) monitors and sets limits on the activity of fringe parties. The wrecking of the first Your Party conference by the Socialist Workers Party, for many years staffed by dozens of undercover police officers (now publicly acknowledged as part of the undercover policing inquiry), was a masterclass, and now any fringe-left or Islamist activist of intelligence knows voting for the Greens is their only outlet. Gay Jewish-Vegan Islamism is permissible, Red-Green Islamism is not. Jean Marie Le Pen was friends with Saddam Hussein; you will not be allowed such privileges. Managed Democracy.

A fair number of the Restore gang, and some ex-Ukippers with their own mini parties, openly claim Farage is controlled opposition, which apparently is differentiated from something called ‘uncontrolled opposition’, much the same thing except you have no money. This, like many worldviews that acknowledge police interference and other hidden explanations for events, has a tendency to collapse into paranoid stupidity, but shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. It is allegedly ‘spiritually brown’, but the worldview of the rich is also entirely based around financial conspiracies, just as the technical middle classes believe in irresistible social forces and the poor in cult hysteria. I haven’t the time to defend that claim at length, but will give a couple of examples to show why ‘uncontrolled opposition’ is pointless.

Restore emerged because of a personal grudge by Rupert Lowe, an unimaginative country businessman who used to be part of the ‘Referendum Party’. That party, defunct since the 1997 election, was effectively replaced by their rivals UKIP. The Referendum Party was founded by Zac Goldsmith’s father James, scion of an illustrious banking dynasty and an extremely interesting character. Goldsmith’s alleged role in the end of state resistance to Harold Wilson remains the subject of continued speculation and perhaps resulted in his unexpected knighthood from the Labour PM as part of the Lavender List.

The Wilson story, though widespread enough to appear in TV dramas, is probably too fun to be true, even if parts of it are now public record or subject to bizarre denials. Since it may be unfamiliar for foreign readers, the basic events were that parts of the British military and security establishment had concerns Harold Wilson was a Soviet sympathiser, and that his policy on Ireland and what was left of the British Empire would be run on such lines, in the end not entirely without reason.

In the fun version of the story, after a series of meetings with the great and good, early but later redacted accounts including James Goldsmith, this almost devolved into a British version of the Generals’ Putsch to save French Algeria. In the end, after these consultations, the putsch mysteriously did not happen, a result which may or may not be linked to inexplicable titles and peerages later being handed to a collection of right-wing business and political figures, including Mr Goldsmith, then known as a hardline anti-Communist.

In the end of the story, Wilson, celebrated architect of our peaceful ‘decolonisation’ by abandoning the British colonies, appears to have conceded sending troops to Ireland in exchange for free rein to ditch White Africa and wage economic war against the independent Rhodesia. These were the policies of American rather than Soviet wokism, and Goldsmith may have been irrelevant to the failure to act, so I encourage you to take such speculation lightly – but it is mysterious that online figures so keen to identify any trace of the Rothschilds or Israeli/Sri Lankan/Huguenot conspiracies in Reform have not considered this.

This is not particularly difficult information to find and has been extensively covered in national newspapers: Goldsmith, who Lowe calls ‘Jimmy’ in a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, was his political mentor and provided for his first national campaign. Anyone on the right who ends up knighted by Harold Wilson, in no small part for his efforts to suppress the free press, is far more suspect than a few Reform diversity hires. After the total failure of the Referendum party, most of its membership was hoovered up by UKIP during the ascension of Farage to the top of that party, Lowe suddenly resurfacing after Brexit to win an easy MEP seat on a Farage-led list. He has since maintained excellent relations with the Conservative Party Reform is supposedly too close to.

In short, this is the career of an ineffective bumbler or deliberate wrecker; that his politics are totally at odds with Old Jimmy shows he probably has a very limited understanding of them anyway. This is probably why he hasn’t noticed his vast disagreements with the Catholic Taliban operating his Twitter accounts.

I have nothing more to add to this. The English right was briefly known for being smarter than its equivalents abroad, this debacle has put paid to that. Only a Boris can save us now. Bring him back, bring him back from the wilderness.

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