Daniel Trilling

Yeah, I ask myself that quite often, actually.

Like, if you went back to me in 2010 or so, when I was reporting on the BNP, the British National Party, who were, you know, this very extreme party founded by neo-Nazis.

whose ideas at the time were regarded as completely beyond the pale, certainly in mainstream politics.

And 15 or more years down the line, there's going to be quite similar sounding ideas circulating at the very highest level.

Would I have been surprised?

I suppose my answer is yes and no.

Back then I thought, you know, this is marginal now, but there are things happening that could make this go much more mainstream, particularly if these ideas are taken up by people with disabilities.

less of an obvious connection to fascism and neo-Nazism.

But what I think I've been quite taken aback by and what prompted me to write the new book is just how rapidly things have got worse in the last, say, three to five years where, you know, we've had far-right populism building for a while in the UK like in other countries.

But it just seems like in the last few years, there's been this opening of the floodgates where very extreme ethno-nationalist, racist rhetoric is suddenly there right at the forefront of British politics.

So Restore began as a pressure group founded just over a year ago when Rupert Lowe left reform after falling out with reforms leadership.

So for a party as new as Restore and one of its size, the opinion poll is quite provisional, but it looks like at the moment they're polling anywhere between 2% or 3% and maybe 6% or 7%.

And Restore claims to have over 100,000 members at the moment, which would make it one of the biggest parties by membership in the UK.

I think you have to take those figures with a pinch of salt, frankly.

Yeah.

The important factor actually is that they're this big online phenomenon and Rupert Lowe again is one of the biggest UK politics social media figures now.

I mean, he's got just under 800,000 followers on X, which is not the largest amount, but his posts have got a much bigger reach because he's online.

tapping into the far-right discourse that is now very prevalent on that platform, and also earning a lot of money out of it.

He earns, according to Parliament's register of MPs' interests, so far £72,000 just from posting on X since being elected as an MP.

You know, like many other liberal democracies around the world at the moment, we are seeing this surge in support for radical right-wing nationalist ideas that have sat traditionally outside of the mainstream of politics.