Elon Musk wants to reshape British society. Will it work?
By Matt Sutton – Director
Elon Musk appears to have taken a remarkable interest in reshaping British politics and society. And increasingly, Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain looks like his vehicle for doing it.
Earlier this summer, Lowe spent more than two hours on The Joe Rogan Experience.
According to Rogan, the interview came about after Elon Musk introduced the two.
Think about what that represents.
Britain’s newest right-wing populist leader.
Two hours being soft balled on the world’s biggest podcast.
Facilitated by the world’s richest man.
At the time, Restore was easy to dismiss as another fragment on Britain’s increasingly crowded political right.
It’s getting harder to do that.
Restore has consistently registered around 3–4% in YouGov’s national voting intention polling, with around one in ten 2024 Reform voters now supporting Lowe’s party.
And in the Greater Manchester mayoral election, Restore won almost 9% of the vote, finishing ahead of the Conservatives in one of Britain’s biggest city regions.
It has become enough of a threat to Reform that the relationship between Lowe and Nigel Farage, and whether the two parties can somehow work together, has itself become a significant question for the British right.
Restore has also attracted its first major financial backer.
Simon Galbraith, the British technology entrepreneur who co-founded Redgate Software, has donated £500,000 to the party. He says Restore could help “spark a British renaissance”.
Restore remains small.
But something is happening.
And Elon Musk is not a disinterested observer.
He has endorsed Restore, repeatedly amplified Lowe and helped connect him to perhaps the most powerful alternative-media ecosystem in the world.
Whether you agree with Lowe’s politics or find them objectionable is almost beside the point.
The point is that this is increasingly how political influence works.
Because this isn’t really about Rupert Lowe.
It’s about whether one of the world’s richest and most influential individuals can help reshape the politics, and ultimately the society, of another country.
Too much of our political and media class still assumes that influence is created in Westminster, on the BBC and in the broadsheets before flowing outwards.
Increasingly, it doesn’t.
Influence is now created inside alternative ecosystems of podcasts, creators, YouTube, X, newsletters and online communities that often barely overlap with the audiences consuming traditional political news.
They have their own gatekeepers. Their own validators, audiences and agendas.
And they are stretching the Overton window of what ideas or opinions are considered acceptable.
Restore is an interesting test of just how powerful those ecosystems have become.
Because Musk doesn’t necessarily need Lowe to become Prime Minister to have an impact.
Restore only needs to become sufficiently influential that everyone else starts responding to it.
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