{"id":2849,"date":"2026-06-21T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/woke-bashing-of-the-week-rupert-lowes-war-on-woke-turned-up-a-notch-days-before-the-makerfield-byelection\/"},"modified":"2026-06-21T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T12:00:00","slug":"woke-bashing-of-the-week-rupert-lowes-war-on-woke-turned-up-a-notch-days-before-the-makerfield-byelection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/woke-bashing-of-the-week-rupert-lowes-war-on-woke-turned-up-a-notch-days-before-the-makerfield-byelection\/","title":{"rendered":"Woke-Bashing of the Week: Rupert Lowe\u2019s war on woke turned up a notch days before the Makerfield byelection"},"content":{"rendered":"<br><p><strong>In the final days before the Makerfield by-election, Rupert Lowe appeared to have settled on a straightforward electoral strategy, denounce anything remotely objectionable as \u2018woke.\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The leader of Restore Britain spent the past week launching attacks against the supposed forces of wokeness, deploying the term so liberally that it increasingly seems to mean little more than &#8220;something Rupert Lowe disapproves of.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/2026\/06\/13\/rupert-lowe-i-wont-have-woke-creeps-telling-us-were-racist\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Speaking to the<em>&nbsp;Telegraph<\/em><\/a>, which, like the&nbsp;<em>Mail on Sunday<\/em>, was keen to report how Restore Britain is backed by neo-fascists, \u201cthe sorts of people how claim Hitler was \u201cmisunderstood,\u201d as the newspaper described, Lowe said: \u201cI\u2019m not going to be put down by some woke creeps telling us we\u2019re racist.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And when asked about the prospect of Restore dividing the right-wing vote, Lowe retorted:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cTo those who warn a divided Right could hand power to Andy Burnham, or a rainbow coalition of the increasingly radical Left,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cGet a life. I\u2019m only interested in doing what I think is right for the country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And Lowe\u2019s anti-woke offensive didn\u2019t stop with his political rivals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He also took aim at Britain&#8217;s universities while questioning public spending on research and development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Speaking during a Public Accounts Committee hearing, Lowe expressed concern about taxpayer money &#8220;disappearing into a woke university abstract experiment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ian Chapman, chief executive of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), hit back, reminding Lowe that the purpose of research funding is to achieve outcomes rather than to police the ideological composition of university departments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Chapman explained that his role was not to &#8220;micromanage&#8221; universities, scrutinise individual hiring decisions or monitor staffing arrangements. Instead, he argued, public bodies should establish clear objectives for publicly funded research and hold institutions accountable for delivering results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet, coming for the man who, a year ago, accused Reform UK itself of &#8220;going woke,\u201d Lowe\u2019s comments come as no surprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI agree with JK Rowling,\u201d Lowe said&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/shorts\/lErdlGKdRzk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">in an interview<\/a>, \u201cthat it appears that Reform have gone woke\u2026 On a number of issues, they appear to have gone woke. Not just welfare payments but almost every aspect with what Nigel utters now appears to be in conflict with what he said in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At this rate, the only thing that isn&#8217;t woke is Rupert Lowe.<\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/leftfootforward.org\/2026\/06\/woke-bashing-of-the-week-rupert-lowes-war-on-woke-turned-up-a-notch-days-before-the-makerfield-byelection\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Woke-Bashing of the Week: Rupert Lowe\u2019s war on woke turned up a notch days before the Makerfield byelection<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/leftfootforward.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK&#039;s progressive debate<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n<br> Anti-woke,Makerfield,Rupert Lowe,Telegraph,woke,woke-bashing of the week\r\n<br><a href=\"https:\/\/leftfootforward.org\/2026\/06\/woke-bashing-of-the-week-rupert-lowes-war-on-woke-turned-up-a-notch-days-before-the-makerfield-byelection\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link  leftfootforward.org<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the final days before the Makerfield by-election, Rupert Lowe appeared to have settled on a straightforward electoral strategy, denounce anything remotely objectionable as \u2018woke.\u2019 The leader of Restore Britain spent the past week launching attacks against the supposed forces of wokeness, deploying the term so liberally that it increasingly seems to mean little more than &#8220;something Rupert Lowe disapproves&hellip;","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":80,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_analytify_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1221,1222,1188,1223,1224,1225],"class_list":["post-2849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-anti-woke","tag-makerfield","tag-rupert-lowe","tag-telegraph","tag-woke","tag-woke-bashing-of-the-week"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}