Restore Britain RUINS Farage? Curtice's Makerfield Bomb

Hinzugefügt: 2026-06-02

[00:00:02]Hi guys, so the Makerfield by-election is becoming more volatile by the day and it's becoming more difficult to predict who's going to win it. Now, I want to show you this clip here where Sir John Curtice, the polling expert, looked at what's happening in the constituency and he looked at an a poll that has just come out. Now, it's a small poll, it's the very first one, but he said that there's some interesting things within it. Have a listen to what he had to say here.

[00:00:26]>> The poll found that 7% of people said they would vote for Restore Britain, which is the breakaway party formed by Rupert Lowe, who fell out, fought with Nigel Farage after being elected as the Reform MP for Great Yarmouth.

[00:00:41]The party he's now advancing, Restore Britain, is even tougher on immigration than Reform. It basically wants to return various categories of people back to where they would claim they come from, which of course that's a very controversial statement in its in its own.

[00:00:57]Whereas for the most part, Reform are talking about trying to reduce the flow of people who come here, although sometimes raising questions about the status of those who have indefinite leave to remain.

[00:01:10]So, the point now this poll for the this party for the most part has not been it didn't it's contested very few wards in the local elections. If the most part it's not been asked about in the polls, though YouGov have been doing so since the beginning of April and they've been getting the party to about 3 or 4%.

[00:01:31]Which is definitely better than Jeremy Corbyn's your party, which has sometimes been zero and sometimes been one.

[00:01:37]Interestingly, younger people, not the older constituency that Reform are dominated from, but certainly definitely people who voted 20 for Reform in 2024. And in this in in the Makerfield poll, we were finding that one in eight of the people who voted Reform in 2024 were saying they were saying they were now going to vote for Restore Britain.

[00:02:01]Which does mean that a clear obvious target for Reform is to try to get these voters back. Uh to try and squeeze them and basically say, I'm Nigel Farage has now been saying this, if you vote for Restore Britain, you are going to save Keir Starmer's bacon um and you're going to let the Labour Party um off the hook. Um uh so um uh that's uh I think the point is um Reform I mean we don't know who can is going to win. We apparently looks like it's going to be 50/50. It also looks like a by-election where already the Conservative vote has been squeezed to Reform's advantage. Where voters are saying they're less less likely to vote for the Greens than they would in a Westminster election and they probably wanted off to Labour. So a lot of squeezing's already going on. It looks like it's going to be a very much a two-horse race.

[00:02:59]But there's just this Restore Britain vote seemingly there to squeeze. Now if Reform can squeeze that vote, Mr. Burnham might be toast.

[00:03:10]But on the other hand maybe but on the other hand maybe Mr. Burnham's leaders a bit like but there is very very little left for Mr. Burnham to squeeze if this poll is right. Indeed, one of the interesting things about this poll actually is if you take Burnham's vote, the Labour Party vote, and the Green vote, it's 50%. If you take the Reform vote and the Restore Britain vote and the Conservative vote, it's 50%.

[00:03:35]It may well indeed be a question of which of the two blocks ends up being more concentrated behind one candidate.

[00:03:45]>> Very very interesting. So and another part of the interview and I'll leave it the link to the entire interview in the description of this video. But, in another part of the interview, he talked about how Andy Burnham would have been better off running in the Gorton and Denton by-election, that this constituency is more of a struggle for him.

[00:04:06]Which is very interesting because as we remember, Andy Burnham was blocked from running in the Gorton and Denton by-election, and then Labour lost it to the Greens and to a certain extent Reform UK. So, it would have been interesting another timeline where Andy Burnham had run in Gorton and Denton. If he had won that seat, we wouldn't be talking about this today.

[00:04:29]But, if he had lost, then God knows what we'd be talking about.

[00:04:35]The situation would be very different.

[00:04:38]So, you notice here what he had said about Restore Britain. Restore Britain is polling much better than your party, Jeremy Corbyn and Zara Sultana's party, if it's still around. But, um they were not polling all that well, um according to official polls.

[00:04:55]But, Restore Britain are doing better.

[00:04:57]So, there's a real opportunity for Restore Britain to stamp their authority, to um to show how popular they are, or maybe unpopular they are.

[00:05:07]But, this will uh this will split the vote unless Nigel Farage is able to squeeze it. Now, what have we been hearing over the last few days and weeks? Well, Restore Britain have been demonized by mainly conservative media. And I'm talking about Reform supporting media like, of course, GB News.

[00:05:28]Your people on GB News and if pe- and of course, people who used to be members of Nigel Farage's Brexit Party, who are now on TalkTV, constantly demonizing uh Restore Britain and Rupert Lowe and talking about how he is splitting the vote and he is denying uh Nigel a chance to, you know, deliver a knockout blow to the Labour Party.

[00:05:51]And I don't know if it's right, we'll have to wait and see, but it seems that Rupert Lowe is not stepping back from this. He's doubling down. He believes that his candidate will be better than the Reform candidate. He believes that he has a real chance at building on momentum.

[00:06:08]And it's going to be very interesting.

[00:06:09]Now, I don't believe the Restore candidate will win. I don't even think they believe they can win, but they are certainly hoping to um send a message to Nigel Farage. And Farage, if they do lose this, would be extremely angry. But there may be people within Restore, sorry, Reform UK, who would say, "Look, we need to appeal to the to the far right. We need to move away from the center and back to the right in the way that Reform have been moving away. And this could create a massive split within Reform.

[00:06:42]This by-election is not just a referendum on the Labour government, it's not just a decider on Andy Burnham, but it could create a massive split within Reform UK. If if Reform if Reform win this, then Nigel Farage is on is on top of the world.

[00:06:59]And Restore Britain, I think, would pretty much fall apart because they had not stopped Nigel Farage. Now, they won't see this as stopping Nigel Farage, but if they don't do well, I think it's going to be a massive blow to Rupert Lowe and the party. And you'll probably start to see people abandon Restore Britain, and maybe some of them will go to Reform UK.

[00:07:21]But if Andy Burnham wins this and we see a a result for Reform UK that could have helped them if Restore Britain had stayed at home or had not polled as well, had not done as well, then I think you're going to see a real split on the right. What's interesting about the left wing is that there seems to be tactical voting involved. The support for the Green Party has somewhat disappeared, the Liberal Democrats as well. It seems they have candidates, but I don't think we're going to see massive campaigning from either of them because they realize, "Look, there's something bigger here. It would be better for Andy Burnham to win this and because we get Starmer out, you know, we can work with somebody like Andy Burnham." I think that's some of the thinking within the Green Party and the Liberal Democrats, but they also believe in an anti-reform vote. They do not want to see Reform UK win this because it's not good for them either.

[00:08:18]So, I think what we're going to see is a very, very interesting by-election. Once again, I'll leave a link in the description to this video of the full interview with Sir John Curtice because he mentioned some other things in this clip which are really, really interesting.

[00:08:31]Let me know in the comment section, guys, what you think. I'll see you in the next video.

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