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Charlie Downes is still at the centre of the row between Reform and Restore because of an old X post about Nigel Farage and Israel. Farage was attending the official launch of Reform’s Jewish organising group when Downes wrote that it explained his “total capitulation to the Israel lobby”. Downes says he meant pro-Israel lobbying, not Jewish people. Farage is not having it. He says there can be no deal with Restore while Downes remains in place. Rupert Lowe has refused to sack him.

What happened next was much more interesting. Farage drew a line and parts of the right immediately started arguing about whether he had any right to draw it. Connor Tomlinson said Restore would not give up its demand for “demographic security for British people”. That phrase matters because it is not Tomlinson improvising on X, and it is not something dreamed up by the mad, bad and sad in Lowe’s replies. Lowe used it himself on 3 August when he set out five principles on which Restore would work with other parties. One was “securing our country’s demographic security”, alongside “reversing the Islamification of Britain”. This is coming from the leader and was presented as one of his conditions for cooperation. Whatever else it is, it is policy.

Andrew Bridgen, the former Conservative MP who now supports Restore, then pushed the argument a little further. Bridgen has travelled some distance politically since leaving the Conservatives. Only yesterday he was posting photographs of aircraft trails over Leeds, calling the “normal sky” a “co-conspirator”. He also attacked Allister Heath for supporting Israel as a Jewish homeland while condemning English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish people who, in Bridgen’s words, “want the same thing”. But the same thing as what? Britain already exists. So do England, Scotland and Wales. Nobody is threatening to abolish them. What Bridgen is talking about is the population living within them. Put that alongside Lowe’s “demographic security” and it becomes much harder to pretend this is simply an argument about immigration numbers.

Andrew Bridgen@ABridgen

Another ‘normal sky’ sent to me by a co-conspirator in Leeds today ! It’s clearly the new normal

8:20 PM · Aug 10, 2026 · 7.23K Views

25 Replies · 44 Reposts · 204 Likes

Andrew Bridgen@ABridgen

Alister Heath is a self declared Zionist.He believes that the Jewish people have a right to their own homeland & to defend its borders. Heath describes English, Scots,Welsh and Irish who want the same in their country as bigots, repugnant, beyond the pale etc Is this hypocrisy?

7:51 PM · Aug 10, 2026 · 18.2K Views

110 Replies · 396 Reposts · 1.83K Likes

Then came the response to the antisemitism row itself. Some of it rather proved the point Farage was making. One account declared that “Reform is under Jewish influence”. Another posted a video of Farage and asked what he would do for “a million shekels”. This is the strange place the argument has reached. People are insisting that accusations of antisemitism against Restore are a media invention while responding to them with some of the oldest antisemitic ideas going: Jewish money, Jewish influence and politicians secretly doing their bidding.

John Galt@BristolGalt

This was for £60. Imagine what he’d do for a million shekels.

2:46 PM · Aug 10, 2026 · 26.5K Views

41 Replies · 120 Reposts · 1.18K Likes

Even Dan Wootton was having none of one conspiracy doing the rounds. Some Restore supporters decided there must be somebody inside Reform leaking against Lowe, perhaps to wreck any deal and push Farage back towards the Conservatives. Wootton pointed out the rather obvious problem. The Telegraph had quoted an official Reform spokesman. Farage then publicly confirmed the same position. There was no need for a hidden hand. Reform was saying it openly.

Dan Wootton@danwootton

@Con_Tomlinson The Telegraph is literally quoting a Reform UK spokesman regarding its call to sack Charlie. So this isn't some sort of leak. A spokesman statement doesn't go out like that without the approval of Nigel.

9:12 AM · Aug 10, 2026 · 5.54K Views

17 Replies · 23 Reposts · 181 Likes

My son suggested a much less complicated explanation yesterday. Perhaps the thing that has changed is the Telegraph.

Axel Springer only completed its takeover of the paper at the end of June. I would be careful about drawing a straight line from new owner to new editorial policy. I have no evidence that anybody at Axel Springer is ringing up editors and telling them what to write. But the change in tone is difficult not to notice. Some of the conspiratorial politics the paper has entertained in recent years seems to be giving way to something closer to its older Thatcherite conservatism.

Antisemitism is particularly interesting here. Axel Springer is unusually explicit about it. Opposition to antisemitism and support for Israel’s right to exist are among the company’s stated principles. That makes the Telegraph’s sudden willingness to go hard at Restore over Downes rather less mysterious.

It does not mean the paper has become liberal. Far from it. Allister Heath can support very severe restrictions on immigration and still decide that Lowe’s demographic politics has crossed a line. Perhaps what we are watching is not the Telegraph moving towards the centre at all. It is the paper trying to recover an older conservative boundary on its right.

Meanwhile Farage had another problem much closer to home.

Zia Yusuf’s row with Ben Wallace did not stop at calling the former Defence Secretary a “moron” and a “traitor to Britain”. By this morning he had put up a poll asking whether Wallace should be prosecuted for treason over the Afghan evacuation. Nearly 5,000 people had voted when I saw it..

Zia Yusuf@ZiaYusufUK

Incredible that this moron was Defence Secretary. Our policy today is in direct response to your government’s failures. If their home countries won’t take back, their citizens that are languishing in our jails, we are renting spaces in countries like El Salvador to put them.

12:08 PM · Aug 10, 2026 · 662K Views

616 Replies · 384 Reposts · 2.25K Likes

This is getting difficult to dismiss as Yusuf losing his temper on X. He has taken a political disagreement with a former minister and turned it into an accusation of treason, followed by the suggestion that the man should be prosecuted for it.

Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧@montie

This isn't acceptable from Zia. I don't agree with @BenWallace70 on this issue but Zia's language and attitude towards any opponent is inappropriate and counter-productive. Opponents are opponents... they aren't enemies... or "moron"s. One of the biggest question marks over

Zia Yusuf @ZiaYusufUK

5:45 PM · Aug 10, 2026 · 254K Views

371 Replies · 87 Reposts · 658 Likes

That makes Tim Montgomerie’s intervention more important. He says he has already raised Yusuf’s language privately, and repeatedly, with both Yusuf and Farage. David Gauke has now publicly asked why Farage has not told him to calm down.

Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧@montie

You assume I haven't raised this issue privately and repeatedly with Zia and Nigel. I have. https://t.co/N85cxVOtfV

Lee Harris @LeeHarris

@montie @BenWallace70 Have a look at what the Tories have said about Reform. They are *far* worse, I'm sure you will agree. This was Tame from Zia. I agree with you, we want to win. Which is why I'm a little baffled you chose to do this publicly and didn't just send Zia a private message.

7:27 PM · Aug 10, 2026 · 29.1K Views

24 Replies · 7 Reposts · 94 Likes

David Gauke@DavidGauke

.@ZiaYusufUK continues to use the word “traitor” about anyone with whom he disagrees. It’s way beyond time that @Nigel_Farage told him to calm down and moderate his language.

David Gauke @DavidGauke

I didn’t vote for either of the winners of the last two General Elections but “traitors” for whom a “reckoning is coming”? Really? This very excitable, angry & hyperbolic man should be nowhere near a position of responsibility in a political party that aspires to power.

8:02 PM · Aug 10, 2026 · 40.4K Views

85 Replies · 136 Reposts · 988 Likes

The timing is awkward. Farage has spent the past few days telling Lowe that leaders are responsible for the people around them. If that is the test, somebody was always going to apply it to him.

Yusuf increasingly looks like a liability for Farage. Tim Montgomerie calls him a man of “huge talents”, but I am struggling to see what those talents are buying Reform at the moment. His interventions create rows, give opponents easy ammunition and undermine Farage’s attempt to present the party as ready for government. Yusuf was also Reform’s biggest donor going into the 2024 election. I cannot prove that his money is what keeps him close to Farage, but it is becoming harder to explain his continued prominence purely in political terms.

There is another reason Farage cannot simply ignore what is happening to his right. Votes.

Reform and Restore are fishing in much the same pool. Under first past the post, Restore does not need to win many seats to cause Farage serious trouble. In a close constituency, a few thousand votes going to Lowe’s candidate could be enough to leave Reform in second place. Reform can do the same thing to Restore, only more easily.

That is what sits underneath all the talk about working together. Lowe’s five conditions were not offered out of friendship. Farage does not need to like Lowe either. Both men know that running candidates against each other across the country could leave them watching Labour or the Conservatives win seats with fewer votes than the two parties managed between them.

The balance of power is not equal, though. Reform is much bigger. Farage can afford to tell Lowe that Downes has to go because, at least for now, Lowe needs an arrangement more than Farage does. The gamble for Farage is that Restore becomes just big enough to hurt him without ever becoming big enough to replace him.

This would be easier to dismiss if Restore existed mainly on X. It does not. I saw that for myself in Great Yarmouth. In May, Great Yarmouth First contested ten seats and won all ten. There were candidates, organisers and people willing to knock on doors. Voters then had to turn up and put a cross on the ballot paper. That is rather different from liking one of Lowe’s posts.

What I do not know is how much of the politics we have been looking at online travels with those voters. Did people in Great Yarmouth vote for “demographic security”? Did they vote for Lowe? Were they simply fed up with the Conservatives, angry about immigration and unhappy with the state of the town? Probably some mixture of all of it. Parties can hold those different things together while the language remains loose. The present row is making it less loose.

There is money behind the operation as well. I would be wary of pretending we know exactly who pays for what inside Restore. We do not. But this is not the usual tiny breakaway party waiting for somebody to lend it a meeting room above a pub. Lowe is wealthy, Restore has raised money from supporters and it is building an organisation around him.

That matters because Lowe does not need to beat Farage everywhere. He does not even need to come close. Under first past the post, Restore only needs enough support in the right constituencies to make Reform lose. Farage knows that. Lowe knows it too.

Perhaps that is why this argument feels more important than the usual falling-out on the right. They may still make up. I would not be remotely surprised if electoral arithmetic eventually produces another phone call and everyone discovers that yesterday’s principles are negotiable.

But Farage has acquired a problem he did not used to have.

For most of his career he was the man outside the boundary, telling Conservative leaders that every attempt to police their right flank was cowardice or betrayal. He could always demand another step.

Now he wants to be prime minister. He needs a boundary of his own.

Rupert Lowe has discovered there may be votes on the other side of it.

The Right Is Turning on Itself

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