Rupert Lowe has cited one of Robert Jenrick’s brightest staffers as a brain behind his hard-line immigration policies.
This month Rupert Lowe – the former Reform MP who was expelled partly because party figures thought he had been radicalised by X – published a policy paper with his “Restore Britain” pressure group.
It was titled “Mass Deportations: Legitimacy, Legality, and Logistics”. The document, written by Lowe and his senior policy fellow Harrison Pitt, talks about deporting two million people – well above the estimated number of illegal immigrants in Britain. In his foreword Lowe writes of the plan: “It would involve effectively abolishing the asylum system. It would mean working to remove from Britain every single illegal immigrant, to be achieved through a mixed approach that combines a hostile environment with voluntary returns and forced deportations. It would require eliminating the threat of politicised lawfare with game changing reforms to the judiciary.”
And there, in the acknowledgements, is Sam Bidwell, who joined Jenrick’s team as a parliamentary researcher earlier this year. Bidwell’s previous role was at the Adam Smith Institute. But he ruffled some of the more libertarian feathers there with his hair-rising X posts about the horrors of migration (his X account is now locked to the public). The 24-year-old is considered something of a boy wonder by radical right-wingers in the Tory party.
He is one of a number of leading lights of the online right thanked at the end of the paper for “trusty friendships or helpful conversations”. And on the face of it, Lowe’s acknowledgement seems like confirmation of a meeting of conservative minds, putting party differences aside to work towards a shared aim of expelling foreigners. There’s just one issue – Bidwell says he barely knows the guy! He told The Pygge he had only spoken to Lowe once, and it wasn’t even about mass deportations (these guys have other hobbies you know). His best guess is he’s thanked due to a Spectator article he wrote on the subject. While he knows Pitt a little better, he added that he’s also never talked to him about it.
Others also thanked under the same heading include: GB News presenter Steven Edginton, of “who is Alfred the Great?” fame, Charlie Bentley-Astor, who has suggested Britain is “a nation flooded with hostile immigrants”, and Connor Tomlinson, who has called Sadiq Khan “a traitor by culture”.
Tomlinson and Bentley-Astor heaped praise on Jenrick earlier this month when he was caught on a hot mic saying that he didn’t see “a single white face” on a trip to the Handsworth area of Birmingham. Tomlinson said “Jenrick is correct. English people happen to be white,” while Bentley-Astor said “the Zoomers aren’t singing from the hymn sheet of Robert Jenrick. He’s singing from our book.”
Looks like Lowe wants in on the love-fest. But if he wants to make friends he has to try speaking to them first.
[Further reading: Great Britain’s failed state]
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