URGENT: Does Rupert Lowe's new political party have a *single* policy paper about the NHS?!

A few months ago, I started noticing that people were tagging Rupert Lowe in comments under my social media videos, often when I was talking about NHS privatisation. At first I thought they were joking, because Lowe’s a former Reform MP who is now trying to build another right-wing political party. Surely they didn’t think he’d be interested in my content?

But as the weeks went on, the number of tags kept growing, and I also started to receive messages from people earnestly saying “Julia, have you spoken to Rupert Lowe about this? He’d want to know”. They seemed to be taking him seriously, and really believed that he cared about the NHS, and so I started to keep an eye on his new political party, Restore. Not loads, mind you. A sort of side-eyed squint from time to time, when their name popped up in the headlines.

I’m not sure how much you know about “Restore”, but it officially became a political party in February this year. Many are saying it’s even more right-wing than Reform UK. But despite it being so new to the political mix, Restore seems to be gaining momentum. In fact, after what’s happened in Makerfield this week, it looks like it could even be stealing votes away from Reform UK, so I think it’s time for us to pay attention to what’s going on…

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you probably know that a historic by-election was held in the Makerfield constituency this week, and that Andy Burnham won. He’s won by a large margin, in fact, prompting discussion about what that could mean for Keir Starmer and the leadership of the Labour Party in the coming months. Burnham’s keen to become Prime Minister, and now he’s won a seat in Parliament he’s finally free to challenge Starmer.

But there was another story that came out this week about the by-election - and it’s really important that we focus on this urgently...