Could Rupert Lowe destroy Reform?

If Andy Burnham wins the Makerfield by-election, the unlikely person he might need to thank is Rupert Lowe, the leader of the new force on the radical right of British politics: Restore Britain.

On paper, Lowe should have no bearing on this contest. Makerfield is one of the most solidly Labour constituencies in the country. Taken together with its predecessor seat, Ince, the constituency has voted Labour at every parliamentary election since 1906. Its MPs have included some of its greatest working-class Labour heroes. Stephen Walsh, Ince’s first Labour MP, began his working life at the age of 13 down a coal mine in Ashton-in-Makerfield. He became Labour’s Deputy Leader and Secretary of State for War in the first Labour government. Walsh’s successor, Gordon MacDonald, also began his working life at 13 down the same pits. Clement Attlee appointed him a colonial governor.

Yet, more recently, Labour’s support in Makerfield has been in decline. Its outgoing MP, Josh Simons, was elected with the second smallest Labour majority since the First World War. The only time the party has done worse was in 2019 when Labour was promising a second EU referendum and Boris Johnson was vowing to “Get Brexit Done”. In May’s local elections, Labour lost every ward in the constituency to Reform. And yet, with Lowe’s Restore standing in the seat, there is a chance that a split on the right could clear a path for Burnham.

If Burnham wins in Makerfield, it would not only be good for him, personally, but significant for the Labour Party’s prospects more broadly, indicating the damage that Restore Britain could do to Reform UK in dozens of Labour constituencies across the country at the next general election.

Although Labour is beset by its own problems on its left, from the Greens and nationalist parties, the splits on the British right look even more ferocious. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is the latest iteration of a series of Eurosceptic, right-wing parties that have existed since the 1990s. 

In 1997, the billionaire Sir James Goldsmith financed the Eurosceptic Referendum Party, which was blamed for costing the Conservatives seats. Goldsmith died soon after the election, and UKIP’s Nigel Farage hastily recruited many Referendum Party supporters into his fold. Since then, Farage has been a thorn in the Conservative Party’s side for most elections in this century.

Yet, Farage now has his own thorn in the form of Lowe and Restore. Elected as a Reform MP at the general election, Lowe has since created his own party, further to Reform’s right. Lowe has been unflinching in his attacks on Farage, calling Reform “a cult”, and its immigration policies “pitiful”. He has denounced Farage himself as “a coward and a viper”. 

Lowe is also unconcerned at the prospect that his party could hand victory to Labour. He wants to destroy his old party, at any cost, even if it is to Labour’s benefit.

This is not the first time that a figure on the outer edges of right wing British politics has helped Labour. In the 1970s, Enoch Powell, who ditched the Conservative Party, first as an independent and then as an Ulster Unionist, did more than possibly anyone else to ensure Labour’s electoral revival after its defeat to Ted Heath’s Conservatives in 1970.

This might sound like hyperbole, but it was a view expressed by senior Labour figures at the time. George Wigg, Harold Wilson’s political fixer, believed Wilson owed his victory in February 1974 to Powell’s opposition to the party for which he had sat as an MP only weeks before. As Wigg, a former career soldier, told Powell with characteristic bluntness, “My version is I am bloody sure he would not have won but for you”.

Enoch Powell’s troubles with his party leadership had been fermenting since the 1960s. He refused to serve in the Cabinet of Sir Alec Douglas-Home. After the Conservatives’ defeat in 1964, he returned to the front bench as Shadow Defence Secretary until he was forced to resign following his infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech in 1968.

When the Conservatives returned to government in 1970, Powell remained on the backbenches, becoming a vociferous opponent of his government’s attempt to join the European Economic Community.

Douglas-Home, whom Heath had appointed Foreign Secretary, wrote to Enoch Powell in 1971 imploring him not to campaign against joining the EEC: “I do wish instead you would concentrate on making speeches on immigration because that is so vitally important and you are so right about it”.  The comments show how, at the time, when people talked about “immigration”, they really meant Black and Asian migrants from the Commonwealth rather than Europeans. 

Powell did not listen to his former leader. In January 1972, Powell went to Liechtenstein to give a speech — in German — outlining his hope that the Labour Party would stop the Heath government from taking Britain into the Common Market. This was, in effect, a Conservative MP calling for the end of a Conservative government.

Heath survived these challenges, and on 1 January 1973 Britain joined the Common Market. But, unbeknownst to Heath, the Labour Leader of the Opposition saw a new opportunity to cultivate Enoch Powell.

That same month, Wilson gave a speech condemning Britain’s new EEC membership. He feared the use of “new powers in Europe” would endanger “the presumed right of an incoming government to propose major changes of economic or industrial policy, such as public ownership”.

Wilson secretly sent a copy of his speech to Powell, who replied to the Labour leader that he read the speech “with (not unnaturally) far reaching concurrence”. Powell then sent Wilson a speech he gave in Nuneaton in February 1973 in which he said: “The claim and aspiration of the Tory Party to be the party of One Nation have been turned into bitter sarcasm.” Perhaps mindful of Powell’s words, Wilson used the “One Nation” moniker for Labour in the next general election. 

Other Labour figures were love-bombing Powell behind the scenes. Nicky Kaldor, a socialist economist and close confidante of Harold Wilson, wrote to Powell to say, “I feel impelled to write to you (one of your political ‘enemies’) to say how very much I admired your speech on the Common Market this week and particularly your clear and emphatic declaration that it is the politician’s sacred duty to put the national interest first and party loyalty second.” Kaldor ventriloquised for the Labour leader saying: “However much Harold Wilson differs from you on other issues, he should certainly endorse your statement.”

In May 1973, Powell refused to campaign for the Conservative candidate in the West Bromwich by-election, the neighbouring seat to his own. The local party had unanimously voted to invite Powell, seeing him as an indispensable part of the campaign, but the Conservative candidate was pro-Europe and pro-immigration. Powell shot back:  “Since you have explained to me that you do not share my view of these matters, it would put both of us in a false position if I were to ask the people of West Bromwich to vote for you in a by-election which must largely turn upon these very issues.”

In the by-election, the Conservative vote dropped nearly 20 points, most of which was taken by the National Front in one of their best by-election results ever. While Powell did not endorse the National Front, his behaviour surely redirected some of his supporters away from the Conservatives. David Butler used to call the Midlands “Powell country”. A Powell intervention could have been especially useful in directing these voters into the Conservative fold.

In the end, neither the Conservatives nor the National Front won the seat. The victor was Labour’s Betty Boothroyd, who would become Speaker of the House of Commons. In Makerfield, we could see a similar dynamic: Andy Burnham victorious, while the Reform and Restore vote split the right. 

A few days after the West Bromwich by-election, Powell sounded out his political future with John Biffen, a fellow Conservative eurosceptic who was also profoundly disillusioned with the Heath leadership. “I am far from happy”, lamented Biffen, “but I console myself that I may not forever have to stumble in a wilderness”. Biffen knew that Powell felt the same but wanted to take bolder action. Powell apparently was considering forcing a by-election in his own seat. 

Biffen said that if Powell was going to do this, then he should just resign and “desist from subsequent political activity”, but he sensed that Powell wanted “to secure a victory for a Labour Party committed to EEC re-negotiation”. While Biffen wanted Powell to take the former action, saying: “I think I understand enough of your character to realise why you seem to be choosing [the latter].”

Powell ultimately chose not to cause a by-election, but the impression that this right-wing Conservative was becoming an asset for the Labour Party was growing. In June 1973, the Daily Express ran a cartoon of a summer fete being opened by Enoch Powell. The caption read: “Future Labour MP opens Conservative fete”.

When Heath called an early general election in February 1974, Powell dramatically announced not only his retirement from Parliament but also his resignation from the Conservative Party (and the Carlton Club). Even more astonishingly, in the week of the election, Powell announced that he had voted by post – for Labour.

The Conservative Party were furious with Powell’s betrayal. At a speech Powell gave to a packed hall in Shipley during the campaign, a heckler shouted “Judas!”. Pointing his finger right back at the heckler, Powell cried, “Judas was paid! Judas was paid! I’m making a sacrifice”.

While the right were furious with Powell, the British left were full of praise. Professor Dipak Nandy, the eminent academic and father of the current MP for Wigan Lisa Nandy, was one of them. On the day that the “Judas” story was reported, Nandy wrote to Powell to applaud his courage despite his horror at Powell’s views on race and immigration.

The former director of the Runnymede Trust and ex-communist told Powell, “in the current Election campaign you have been the only person to go right to the heart of the matter, and you have done so with a courage which many like myself, who heartily detest your views on race and immigration, are nevertheless reluctantly compelled to admire”.  Nandy said he thought Powell had “a great deal to say to the people of this country and that I hope you will not contemplate withdrawing from public affairs in the critical years ahead”.

Bernard Donoughue, Wilson’s senior policy adviser, told me in an interview that the Labour leadership were extremely pleased with Powell’s prominence in the campaign. “Wilson could see the advantages. He talked to me about it. The great advantage [was] if Powell could split the Tories, since it was politically very close, it might just give us the edge in winning the election.”

Even more astonishingly, Powell had been secretly working with Harold Wilson’s team throughout the campaign. The key contact was Wilson’s press secretary Joe Haines. According to Donoughue, Powell often phoned Haines to co-ordinate speeches so that Wilson and Powell could complement each other in their attacks on the Heath government. Powell would give advance sight of his speech so that ‘Wilson’s speech could link with it but not say the same thing and not say different things’. 

In March 1974, Harold Wilson became prime minister, partly in thanks to Enoch Powell. Nonetheless, George Wigg advised Powell that it would be “inconceivable” that Wilson would openly acknowledge Powell’s indispensable role.

Powell did not wander in the wilderness for long. He returned to parliament in October 1974, this time as an Ulster Unionist MP. While Powell maintained some friends in his former party, he remained a harsh critic, even as in many respects the party moved closer to his politics as time went on.

Instead, Powell began to cultivate warm friendships with Labour Cabinet ministers in the 1974-79 government, including Michael Foot and Tony Benn. After Foot became Labour leader in 1980, Powell wrote him a gushing letter of congratulations: “What sheer joy it is to me that you are on top. I tell people it is good for Parliament and good for Britain.” Foot replied with equal generosity: “What a pity we do not agree about everything in politics. We could change the whole political climate and country too. However, let us see what we can do on the matters we do agree. Of course, let us meet and fairly soon.” Foot added, “it is our turn” to host Enoch and Pamela Powell.

It is highly unlikely that Rupert Lowe would endorse Labour in a future election, or have Andy Burnham over for dinner. It is also implausible that he would write such a gushing note to the Manchester mayor or Keir Starmer. But, the remarkable point is that it is even less imaginable that Lowe would write a note of praise to his former leader Nigel Farage.

Last year, Rupert Lowe warned, “Nigel Farage must never be prime minister”. The Makerfield by-election may indicate how much of a role Lowe could play in ensuring that never happens.

[Further reading: It’s so much worse than Rupert Lowe thinks]