NADINE DORRIES: Rupert Lowe and the dark arts plot behind the by-election convulsing the nation…

As you read this, probably with a coffee in hand, I’ll be walking up and down the rainy streets of Makerfield, pushing damp leaflets into letterboxes as this historic by-election campaign enters its final weeks.

I trained as a nurse in the seventies at a hospital near Warrington and have a deep love for the area. The first nightclub I visited was Wigan Casino. When we lived in the nurses’ quarters on Bewsey Road, we often hired a bus to take us to the legendary home of the Northern spirit at the weekends.

For all these years, one of the best selling places for my novels has been this region in the North West. In fact, it was Labour’s Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy who once told me that the Wigan branch of Waterstones had devoted an entire window to a new book from my Four Streets series.

My trip down memory lane aside, the real reason I’m at Makerfield today is to challenge Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham’s plan to defend Keir Starmer. It had been his lifelong ambition to become Prime Minister, and this was a desperate last-ditch attempt to grab the keys to No 10 and impose his entire socialist agenda on the nation.

There is a joke among Labor MPs at Westminster that Burnham’s sudden passion for Makerfield would have been believable had she not telephoned 26 other MPs and asked them to step aside for her first!

I first met Andy 20 years ago and he is a lovely guy. But it is no secret, and never has been, that he is completely ruthless politically, and that the job of mayor has always been a means to an end, with Downing Street the target. And if there’s one man who can help him achieve that goal, it’s Rupert Lowe, leader of the right-wing Restore Britain party.

Polls consistently show that only Reform or Labor can win this by-election; A Survation poll shows Burnham with around 43 per cent of the vote, the Reform candidate (plumber Robert Kenyon) with 40 per cent, and the Conservative Party in last place with 2 per cent.

It’s either one or the other. So why did Restore field a candidate whose intellectual capacity matches Katie Price’s and Rebekah Vardy’s?

Lowe’s Restore Britain candidate could split the Right wing vote with 7 per cent of votes in Makerfield by-election

This may seem harsh but we have neither seen nor heard from 53-year-old businesswoman Rebecca Shepherd from Restore. An interview he had recently agreed to with The Spectator magazine was canceled after Lowe made repeated excuses for why he could not attend.

Even so, he could still get 7 per cent of the vote that day – including those who might confuse Reform with Restore on the ballot – splitting the right-wing vote.

So a vote for Restore is literally a vote for Burnham. It doesn’t make any sense, right?

That is, if you know the characters involved, the size of their egos, and the shady conversations in the backroom as I write.

It’s no secret that Restore’s leader, Cotswold farmer Lowe, is your typical flamboyant lad who likes to talk numbers. By number I mean how many acres he has and how many guns he has. It is also well known that despite running for the Brexit Party (the predecessor of the Reform) in the 2019 General Election, he waded into the backwaters of the Conservative Party and dramatically withdrew his candidacy for Dudley North just before nominations closed.

At the time, he said he feared his candidacy would split Leave votes between the Brexit Party and the Conservatives and secure Labor candidate Melanie Dudley’s path to Westminster.

‘I saw no logic in splitting the Leave vote and allowing someone politically very different from me into Westminster,’ he explained. But that’s exactly what he’s doing now: reforming. So what changed? So how close is Rupert Lowe to the Conservative Party today?

I can tell you that Lowe was pulled over in Dudley North on November 14, 2019, a few days after a meeting at 4.30pm with Dougie Smith, the highly secretive Tory adviser and the man I call the dark arts coordinator, at the DoubleTree Hilton Hotel on John Islip Street in London.

He denied receiving an assistantship or job offer from the Conservative Party in exchange for his resignation. That would be it, wouldn’t it?

But Lowe’s connections to the Conservative Party did not end there. He recently announced on the Register of Members’ Financial Interests a £20,000 donation from Bolton Agnew, a businessman and brother of his Conservative life peer Lord Agnew of Oulton, who served as a minister in the Cabinet Office under Michael Gove. Lowe was said to occasionally live at Lord Agnew’s estate in Norfolk while visiting the Great Yarmouth constituency he won as a Reform MP in 2024 before being suspended by Nigel Farage over allegations he threatened party chairman Zia Yusuf.

Last year he was also placed on the prestigious Public Accounts Committee by Kemi Badenoch; this move angered Conservative MPs; Many of them would sell their own grandmothers for the chance to sit on this high-profile committee.

So why is the Conservative Party so desperate to keep Lowe on its side?

A senior member of the party told me they saw Rupert as a useful tool in keeping Nigel Farage at bay. In fact, I believe some Conservatives would prefer Burnham to win this month’s by-election rather than Reform. They know a Reform victory would send shockwaves through the Conservative Party and destabilize Ms Badenoch’s leadership.

The plot thickens further when you consider the shadowy figures in the background who believe there will be no one left to replace Kemi Badenoch if she is sacked, following the departure of shadow justice secretary and leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick to Reform last year.

But if there’s one thing I learned in 2023 when I wrote The Plot about the Machiavellian collusion within the Conservative Party that hastened Boris Johnson’s downfall, it’s that those pulling the strings always have a card up their sleeve. Could they keep Lowe at the end of the line by waving carrots because they saw him as a useful fool to suppress the upward march of the Reformation?

As always in politics, there is much more going on behind the scenes than the public knows, and nothing is as it seems.

In the meantime, I will continue to hand out leaflets in the hope that Makerfield’s Right-wing voters will realize they have been made fools of by Lowe and his cronies. This is the only way to save the country from drifting leftward, which will make things worse than we can imagine.

Champions of our heritage

Jeremy Clarkson’s choir of farmers from across the UK wins Britain’s Got Talent award

Was I the only one watching tearfully on Saturday night as the Hawkstone Farmers Choir stormed Britain’s Got Talent with a roaring victory?

Originally founded and funded by Jeremy Clarkson (and named after his own beer brand), the Cotswolds choir delivered a successful performance with their song This is Home. This headline is certainly a dig at Rachel Reeves, who reduced inheritance tax relief for family farms and many were forced to sell the land they cared for. across generations.

In fact, the main message of the night was about the mental health of our farming community. As someone who lives in the area, I know how important this case is. But it is also about our heritage, who we are and our vital struggle to save a way of life that has helped fill Britain’s breadbasket with blood, sweat and tears. Well done, Hawkstone. What a night!

So Generation Z, the most boring generation ever, discovered ‘zebra drinking’, a way to avoid this. hangover

Zebra drinks are, quite simply, alternative drinks. For example, a glass of wine followed by a glass of mineral water.

I’ve been doing this for years; With one very important difference. I add the water to the wine. (As a typical Boomer, I can’t stand the taste of water alone.)

But this wasn’t something I practiced in my 20s. A hangover is a rite of passage; but it is something to be avoided when you have fully experienced how bad the person can be.