Chris Dixon offers this summary of Rupert Lowe MP, leader of Restore British Furniture and contender for Nigel Farage’s crown:
Rupert Lowe, the privately educated investment banker who was born into wealth – has never had the fight of the working class in his soul.
Rupert Lowe, the man who worked for Deutschebank – a company that was integral in selling British assets to international interests.
Rupert Lowe, a previous member of the Tory party and a champion of Brexit, which has paralysed our economy, culture, parliament and businesses.
Rupert Lowe, stood for election on 1997, a career politician who pretends not to be.
Rupert Lowe, a man who hired his friend, a rugby coach, on the board of a football club. Rupert Lowe, a man who makes anti-semitic jokes and blames immigrants for all our ills.
Rupert Lowe, a man who mistakes charity rowers for migrants.
Rupert Lowe, a man who has massively undercosted how much mass deportations will cost the economy, and how much damage this will do as he creates massive job gaps no one can or wants to fill.
Rupert Lowe, who wants to strip us of our rights so we have less opportunities but enable more wealth creation for the already wealthy, whilst we become sick and poorer.
Vote Lowe if you want to live in a crueller world which puts the working classes in the place Lowe and the elites want them.
Peace love and joy he is not. See also CONform UK.
Kier Starmer offered a dignified and full apology yesterday over his appointment of “Mandelstein” or “Mandy”. Subject to transparency via the investigation, that is sufficient in my view. Why do I say that, you may well ask? Starmer actually sacked Mandy where others did not. He has persuaded M to step down as a Lord. In due course and subject to there being sufficient evidence, Mandy will be prosecuted and possibly jailed. Later on we are likely to see similar outcomes with Michelle Mone and others. All takes time, but the law moves at a very slow pace. Farage law is not a suitable replacement for the rule of law as some CONform nutjobs suggest (“Farage Law” amounts to saying “Your eyes are too close together” or “You have a bit of a tan … GO TO JAIL”).
James O’Brien asked the question why did we not know all of this when Mandy was appointed as “Ferrero RocherAmbassador and Defence Against The Dark TrumPutin Arts” to face down Trump in 2025. I was in fact one person who did predict that this appointment would end in tears in time – it was not a question of if but when. If you work in HR, one normally has a list of essential and desirable qualities plus contra-indications for your selection process. Mandy did possess some qualities which will have been judged as postives, and I suspect that McSweeney et al did not use my checklist below to look at the massive list of contra-indications. Starmer’s weakness is perhaps that he listened to McSweeney. It’s a forgiveable leadership sin, especially when weighed against the actions that Starmer has now taken to rectify the error. I say this objectively as someone who is not a massive Starmer fan. At the time, we must remember that we were beleagured by Brexit, and therefore wanting to be friends with ANYONE and EVERYONE on the international stage. Although it’s not clever, I think I understand why Starmer may have come to the conclusion that Mandy was an essential evil to tame the 5 Ts : Trump’s Toddler (Todger !!) Temper Tantrums. Although I very much doubt that proper HR processes were used, a sober analysis of the situation may have revealed the looming problem of Mandelstein to those possessed with hubris when advising / lobbying Keir Starmer.
Dear Keir
Starmer stood up for decency and the rule of law yesterday and, for that, I give him a free pass. That said, it comes with some Terms and Conditions:
Morgan McSweeney must go. He is the architect of much of this and will have lobbied Starmer to accept Mandy, having also persuaded him to oust Sue Gray for opposing him.
Editor’s note. Starmer has now done this. Praise where it’s due. If he next manages to get Mandie banged up, he will cast a long shadow on Reform, The Tories and the populists polluting our politics on planet earth. STOP PRESS 23 Feb 2026 – Mandy has been arrested. I may have to buy a hat to eat !!
Credit where it's due. Well done to Keir Starmer for removing Morgan McSweeney from Downing Street. I'm no fan of Keir but he has done what none of the others would have done. If he gets Mandelson banged up, he will cast a shadow on the populists around the world. Still more to do but good show.
Brexit must be ended as a priority, not in 2032, as some Labour MPs suggest. Fix the fundamentals as Keir likes to say a lot. Brexit lies at the heart of a lot of Britain’s problem as our Brexit Iceberg shows
Policy making which prays to the far right fascist fringe must stop. Remember, 90% of Reform accounts are bots. Many of Starmer’s bad decisions have been aimed at appeasement of the far right. It is ALWAYS a mistake to appease fascists.
More should be made of the good works that Labour are doing. This is a comms issue, which once again lies at McSweeney’s door.
Mainstream media
I was shoe horned onto LBC at 11.57 today (Fri 6 Feb) (thank you by the way) to try to explain all of this in ‘just a minute’. Find the playback on the LBC app or here on our radio interviews with MSM:
Click the image to listen to the LBC segment on our bandcamp page.
My friend Dr Raj Persaud also made this superb piece of analysis on the matter of Mandy.
Turn despair into action
Write to your MP, enclosing a hard copy of our book Brexit RIP, written by 60 British and European citizens, including two MEPs, a KC and many eminent experts .. Hard copy books have a much longer “social journey” than bleating about it on social media. They get passed around and so on. Gift copies to your circle of contacts, especially those soft leavers who are starting to doubt the idea that Brexit was a sticking plaster for all of our problems, and Rejoiners who consider the matter closed for a host of reasons. Relight the fire.
Hard copies have a much better ‘social journey’ than e-mail. Much better for MPs, influencers and social contacts.
Here’s a short roundup of recent activity and some future outlook on the movement to end Brexit, Rejoin the EU and Reboot Britain in a year where insanity was normalised in several political theatres of the absurd around the globe.
Progress 2025
I list three recent projects of note … We were interviewed by Danish journalist Rose Kodal recently on Brexit and Rejoin. She interviewed people across the Brexit spectrum. Her final piece is an interesting perspective of views on Brexit from academic to more out front pragmatic leadership on the topic. Poor old Ken the Brexiteer simply wants his daughter to forgive him for his vote to leave and value his continuing illusions about Brexit as being equivalent to facts. She won’t. Illusions are not of the same value as facts. Find Rose’s brilliant piece of journalism here. If you can help her find her career into journalism you will find her at Rose Nina Kodal Larsen on Linkedin.
We also did an online masterclass on Rejoining the EU for North Herts for Europe. The session was invaded by Reform UK types who exposed themselves on the call and filled the screens with pornography. This really sums them up. After some careful editing, we salvaged the content. The Q&A is very interesting as it plays to some of the problems we still have as a movement summed up by Qahir. There are no easy fixes to change the culture of the Remoaners as he pleads for. God knows I’ve tried and made myself extremely unpopular into the bargain.
Q&A session. A great insight into the minds of Remainers.
Keynote address. No Reform nudity thankfully …
The Brexit RIP : Reboot Britain book has had another minor update to consider the impact of demographic changes aka death, based on the illusion that Nigel Farage could re-litigate Brexit if elected in 2029. Still people are more occupied by working as NF’s unpaid marketing forrce than driving forwardson our own strategy. Then they wonder why NF prevails. Oh well, this leads me to Project 2026.
Outlook : Project 2026
I am stepping back from full time involvement in Brexit and Rejoin, having given nearly 10 years of my life, much of it full time and unpaid to do so. Instead, I will work on a project by project basis to continue the work to break Parliamentary silence, leaven the mainstream media’s grip on populism and so on, see our five goals. Projects I am willing to undertake include:
Public speaking to constituency groups and / or movements. such as I did for Labour MP Sadik Al-Hassan in 2025. This was instrumental in breaking the silence on Brexit and promoting a minor rebellion in parliament, alongside the book which we sent to 300 + MPs, risking arrest in Parliament for taking white envelopes to the House of Lords and Portcullis House.
I have been asked to tour the UK in the Bollocks to Brexit Mini on a “Cost of Living” tour, including street events, keynotes and so on. Organising the stunt is easy but ensuring that our message reaches deep into each community’s heart and so on requires work. I’d judge that the project is not currently viable, needing a social media team, press / media people, an on the ground group to organise events and fundraising to cover costs. Get in touch if you would like to help. A mini tour might tame the complexity.
I was also asked to assist with an Organisation Development (OD) approach to align the various movements who wish to bring a fairer voting system to Britain. Further to some initial analysis, I found that they are just as divided as the Remain movements over ends and means and I have declined until they are ready for such a series of interventions. It would be akin to trying to heal an alcoholic who does not believe they have a problem with alcohol. I have wasted too much of my own time on such projects and ideologues so I’m setting a higher bar for my professional services in 2026. Get in touch if you have a project that may be of value and I promise to take a look at it without prejudice.
The major shift that I have not been able to alter significantly is the “learned helplessness” of the Rejoin / Remoan movement. They are the principle internal obstacle to Rejoin. We could significantly impact the parliamentary silence on the matter if they also stopped arguing about ends and means. Here are some of the daily objections I encounter from such people. It’s seriously wearing, reinforced by mixed messaging from the larger rejoin movements and key actors. I see no possibility of building enough momentum to Rejoin EU until the movement heal themselves. I get hardly any pushback from Brexiteers. We are the obstacle.
Only the cat is a good reason to do nothing …
I’m told that Keir Starmer is toast shortly. To be honest I have mixed feelings about it as nobody seems able to tell me what comes from it. We removed Theresa May only to get Boris Johnson … Oh well. To 2026 …. !!!
Reform UK have had to rebrand the party in order to cope with the “swarms of failed Tories” that are now infecting their party. Honest Bobby J joins useless Nadine Dorries and Andrea “the finger) Jenkyn this week. Quite surprisingly, The Trussmeister has not joined yet. We can presume that she’s simply too toxic to be accepted by NF. Boris must be waiting in the wings to pounce on Bad Enoch at her maximum point of weakness. Although anything is possible in our disruptive politics, I think that Boris + Nigel may fall into the category of what Sparks called “This town ain’t big enough for the both of us”. Here are the new logo designs. Feel free to use them in your work and thank you to JP Flowers for converting my CONform concept into the initial design.
