When the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) swept to victory in the east German state of Saxony-Anhalt last Sunday, it sent a shiver down the spines of most European political parties. But in Britain, one party was elated.

Rupert Lowe, the leader of Restore Britain, was quick out of the blocks to send his best wishes. He posted on X: “A huge congratulations to our friends in the AfD – an inspiration for what Restore Britain can achieve.”

The result in Germany put the AfD – who are designated “right-wing extremist” by German domestic intelligence – just short of an outright majority.

If the AfD can convince another party to support it, then it would represent the first time a far-right party has governed a German state since the end of the Second World War.

Restore forging links with far-right around the world

Lowe’s post was not a one off. The i Paper can reveal that for months, Restore has been quietly cultivating links with far-right parties around the world, including the AfD.

Restore figures have attended conferences with far-right activists in other countries, including an AfD politician fined in Germany for knowingly using a Nazi slogan and an Austrian activist who admitted to placing a swastika on a synagogue when he was younger.

Last month, Restore’s campaign director Charlie Downes travelled to Canada to attend a conference in Ontario organised by the Dominion Society of Canada, which is described by the Canadian Anti-Hate Network as “a white nationalist organisation”.

Downes revealed on X that he was detained at the US-Canadian border for “a 20-minute long interrogation” by a patrol officer, but he was allowed into the country and gave a speech at the conference.

Speaking about his visit and brief detention in Canada, Downes said: “I have no criminal record, I have never incited violence, incited terrorism or anything of the sort. I’ve never been banned from any other country. I am a 25-year-old political activist who cares about my country, who cares about Canada, who cares about Europe, European civilisation.”

Far-right activist banned from Britain

He was supposed to be joined at the event by Martin Sellner – an Austrian who is one of Europe’s most prominent far-right activists.

Sellner, 37, helped popularise the term “remigration” – a word used by the far-right to refer to the mass deportation of non-European immigrants and even native residents with a migrant background, back to their countries of origin.

As The i Paper reported last month, the term has been used by a number of senior Restore officials.

Sellner is open about the fact that he used to be a neo-Nazi and at the age of 17 admitted to placing a swastika poster on a synagogue, although he says he has since changed his ways.

Sellner has lavished praise on Restore. Earlier this year, he said that it represented a “historic opportunity for genuine political change in England” and “has the potential to become an English AfD”.

Lucy White, a high-profile British far-right activist and Restore member also spoke at the Ontario conference, with the event organisers posting a picture on X of her standing proudly alongside Downes.

White is mentioned in the acknowledgments of a Restore policy paper setting out how the party plans to deliver mass deportation of illegal migrants, appearing in a list of individuals thanked for “their trusty friendship or helpful conversation”.

In a recent video on X, she denied that remigration amounted to ethnic cleansing. White said: “It’s actually the reverse. We have been ethnically cleansed of our homelands and we just want to send you back to your homeland. That’s not ethnically cleansing that’s just repatriation, that’s just sending them back.”

As well as travelling to Ontario, White also spoke at a “Remigration Summit” organised by Sellner earlier this year in Porto, Portugal. A picture on White’s X profile shows her sitting next to Sellner at the event. Another Restore member, Sammy Woodhouse, also spoke at the summit.

The Portugal summit was attended by Björn Höcke, the chair of the state branch of the AfD in Thuringia. In 2024, Höcke was found guilty by a German court of knowingly using a Nazi slogan in a speech and fined €13,000.

Höcke has also courted controversy by condemning the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, saying in 2017 that Germans were the “only people in the world who planted a memorial of shame in the heart of their capital” and that the country needed a “180-degree turn” to how it remembers its past.

There are further connections. Lowe, White and Höcke are all signatories to the “Save Europe Act” – a charter organised by Sellner which rails against “replacement migration” and calls for “remigration measures for non-European migrants who are unintegrated or constitute a serious cultural or financial burden”.

Asked about Restore’s links to foreign far-right parties, including Downes and White’s appearances at the conferences, Lowe said: “Restore Britain has made our position clear on immigration – we will deport the illegal migrant population, along with those foreign nationals who refuse to work, can’t speak our language, claim benefits, live in social housing, hate our way of life and are a burden on the British people.

“That is our position. What anybody else argues is for them. This is where we stand.”

The support for the AfD comes amid a hardening in Lowe and Restore’s rhetoric in relation to immigration. In recent days, Lowe has said that public officials involved in accommodating small boat migrants would be retrospectively prosecuted by a Restore government, with “hundreds, if not thousands” sent to prison. Earlier in the summer, he threatened to “prosecute officials and politicians who knowingly placed dangerous third world savages in our communities”.

The i Paper asked Lowe whether this included current and former ministers – in essence a threat to prosecute and imprison Restore’s political opponents – but did not receive an answer.

Splits in the British right

Lowe’s response to the AfD’s victory in Saxony-Anhalt highlights the splits on the British right about how to deal with the rise of right-wing populists in Europe, as well as developments closer to home like the masked small boats protests.

Nigel Farage and Reform UK have been much more cautious than Lowe when it comes to the AfD, with Farage referring to the party in April as a “mixed bag” and saying he found its pro-Russian sympathies “hard to understand”.

Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader, meanwhile told The i Paper last year that his party was “absolutely not” ideologically aligned with the AfD. “There are elements of the AfD which in a sense are acceptable to people and there are elements of it that frankly are completely unacceptable,” he said.

Farage has, however, taken a very different tack with National Rally (RN), the French hard-right party led by Marine Le Pen. Last week, he welcomed the party’s president, Jordan Bardella, to Reform’s annual conference in Birmingham to sign a “memorandum of understanding” that a Le Pen government would accept small boat migrants returned to France by the Royal Navy.

Farage said he would not have done a deal with the party under its former leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine’s father, who was fined for downplaying the Holocaust. Farage said Marine had succeeded in “getting rid” of “extreme elements” after she took over the party.

Aside from the AfD, Lowe and Farage have also reacted differently to the masked protests in Dover and elsewhere.

Farage labelled the scenes in Dover last weekend – when hundreds of men clad in black and wearing masks and balaclavas blocked roads – as “disgusting”. “You should not be allowed to be masked-up, balaclava-ed up and go out and protest on the streets of our country,” he said.

Lowe has meanwhile praised the protesters as “British patriots” and argued they are justified in concealing their identities.

However, there also seem to be tensions with Reform in how to respond.

While Farage has been relatively condemnatory about the protests, Reform’s home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf attacked the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch after she said that “thuggery” was not the answer to anger about illegal immigration. Lee Anderson, Reform’s chair, also said in the House of Commons that people were taking to the street because they are “furious”.