BRIAN READE: ‘Rupert Lowe’s new get together Restore feels like a male hair loss therapy’

On Feb 21, 2026

How surprising that Rupert Lowe has done what every far right egomaniac does when they realise the only big cheese allowed in a Nigel Farage party is Nigel Farage: Form their own one.

07:00, 21 Feb 2026

The multi-millionaire, former public schoolboy/city banker (a label applied to most of these Populist grifters purporting to dedicate their lives to lifting up the white working-class) who was elected last year as a Reform MP, has called his party Restore Britain. Or Restore for short.

Which is appropriate as Restore sounds like a male hair loss treatment. And Lowe’s party will be very much like a bald white head: No roots, extremely thin (on supporters), its members’ faces old and having no colour.

In short, a good name. Although when you hear their dog whistle policies such as mass deportations in which “millions will have to go” I think How Lowe Can You Go might have suited the party better.

The far right sect Lowe used to belong to, Reform UK, held a shadow cabinet press conference this week, even though they’re not the Shadow Cabinet and with only four members, are 22 shy of a full one. Maybe they should call themselves after pop foursome The Shadows, with Farage fronting them as Cliff Richard (or White Cliffs as the Kent patriot would be proud to call himself).

White Cliffs introduced his Shadows like Simon Cowell bringing on BGT finalists (in this case Britain’s Got Turds) and whenever the spotlight moved away from the Turdmaster General for more than a few minutes, he dragged it back to him.

A reporter pointed out four of those on stage went to expensive private schools, and asked Suella Braverman (Pretend Shadow Education Minister) if the public would be right to question their commitment to state education. Straight from the Trump playbook Farage, skin thinner than a stretched condom, closed the woman down in a humiliating manner, just stopping short of saying, like his idol: “be quiet piggy.”

Newsnight’s Victoria Derbyshire later skewered Zia Yusuf (Pretend Home Secretary) over Reform’s plans to take apart the Equality Act while having no idea which bits they want to shed or keep.

The following day, Robert Jenrick (Pretend Shadow Chancellor) gave what was supposed to be a keynote speech but the only policy he could come up with was bringing back the two-child benefit cap. He said he would like to keep the pensions triple-lock, but Farage has cast doubt on that, so either that will go or Jenrick will. Probably both.

All the time a Reform bus is driving around Gorton and Denton with a slogan saying they will “Boost Wages” despite Farage proposing in November to lower the minimum wage for young people, and Reform MPs voting every time against bolstering workers’ rights. Farage lying on the side of buses? Surely not.

Meanwhile in Kent, seven Reform councillors have defected to Restore with a Reform source saying Restore was “welcome to our dregs.” Reform being the party that is directing Tory dregs straight into its Pretend Shadow Cabinet.

If you love watching rich boys scrapping in the gutter over who hates immigrants the most, maybe these parties are for you. My take is that when you look past their single issue of deporting as many dark-skinned people as possible, they offer nothing but more toxic bigotry.

So, to rework a 1980s health campaign: Just Say No to Dregs.

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There was some good news for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor who was arrested by Thames Valley Police on Thursday. That day was also his 66th birthday, meaning he now qualifies for a free National Bus Pass. So, if any of the other eight forces who are looking into his possible criminal involvement with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, follows the lead of Thames Valley and calls him in for questioning, it won’t cost him a penny to get to their interview rooms. So, every cloud has a silver lining, eh?

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News that we’re now in the Chinese Year of the Horse reminded me of how a few years back we used to watch telly with the sub-titles on so my almost-deaf dad was not excluded. And it was far funnier than anything on the schedules.

It was a bit cringey during steamy scenes when words flashed up in capital letters like “SEX NOISES” and “GROANING” and Reg once asked me to explain “rimming.”

But the errors in those subtitles of 20 years ago were often magnificent. Like a royalist commentator calling for “two minute’s violence” to honour the Queen Mother when she died, and the BBC marking the Chinese calendar change with “Welcome to the Year of the Whores.”

To which Reg asked: “Have the Chinese run out of animals?”

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I covered Muhammas Ali’s funeral in Kentucky ten years ago, and two quotes from that memorable day have stuck with me.

One was from a retired teacher who lived on the Louisville street where Ali grew up. When I asked him what was so special about the man, he replied: “He freed black people from the prison of our own inferiority.”

Another came from Jesse Jackson when I asked him what he admired most about his friend Ali. He paused, thought and replied with a cool certainty: “His humility.”

Jackson, who died this week, radiated a very special aura, a large part of which was humility. Which is why he is such a loss to American politics.

Because rarely has that country so needed its leaders to show humility on the world stage.

Yet never before, especially at presidential level, has it been so absent.

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A survey of 2,000 British radio listeners has shown that the most memorable moments heard on our wirelesses this century were the news of the Queen’s death, the announcement of the first Covid lockdown and 9/11. Sure, they were all big moments. But none of them make my top three places. They go to James Naughtie (on Radio 4 in 2010), Justin Webb (Radio 4 in 2018) and Nicky Cambell (Five Live in 2019) for pronouncing the first letter of Jeremy Hunt’s surname with a “C.” True, funny and unforgettable.

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THE WEEK’S FIVE BIG QUESTIONS:

If E.T. phoned home today is there a high chance he’d find no one to speak to, as most of us have got rid of our landlines?

Why has the BBC made a drama about boys stranded on an island, called Lord of the Flies, when they should have been making one about girls stranded on Epstein Island, called Lord of the Files?

Has Britain finally become world class at the Winter Olympic sport of skeleton because so many of us are taking fat jabs?

Did Keir Starmer flip his pancakes 15 times on Tuesday, then promise they’re the flips he’ll do?

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Tony Blair saying in a Channel 4 series about him that politicians “cannot be bystanders.” So how come he’s stood right back and hasn’t uttered a word about his big chum Lord Mandelson?