Former Restore ‘Rising Star’ Orla Minihane Defects Back to Reform UK, Accusing Party of Toxic Culture Run by Abusive Young Men
Updated: 6 days ago
Orla Minihane, Restore Britain’s first female spokesman and the founder of the Pink Ladies women’s safety campaign, has returned to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK after a brief and turbulent spell with Rupert Lowe’s breakaway party.
Minihane, who left Reform earlier this year after being approached by Lowe, says she quickly concluded the move was a mistake. She accuses the day-to-day operators of Restore of creating a “toxic” environment dominated by “politically voracious young men who are not just power mad, but deeply abusive.” She has stated that Lowe “isn’t really in charge” and that failure to address the problem will leave him with little support.
Background and recruitment
Minihane rose to prominence as the leader of the Pink Ladies, a group that emerged from protests against asylum hotels (notably the Bell Hotel in Epping) and focused on crimes against women and girls linked to migration.
She previously served as vice-chair of Reform UK’s Epping Forest branch. Lowe courted her roughly a year ago, before Restore was formally registered as a party, promising a platform for her women’s safety work.
She was announced as a defector and appointed spokesman on the issue; Lowe described it as “wonderful to have her on the team.”
Claims of abuse and the Gateshead incident
Minihane has described being called a “mudblood” (a Harry Potter-derived slur for impure ancestry) at a party meeting because she is half Irish, and being told that women should not be involved in politics. She was also reportedly asked whether she would save a drowning Indian girl. These claims were first reported by The Telegraph when she quit Restore last month.
The decisive break came at a July event in Gateshead. In a speech on women’s safety, Minihane said that alongside protecting young British women from crimes by migrant men, the party should also address issues such as female genital mutilation (FGM) within migrant communities, and that non-white girls born in Britain also needed protection. She claims her remarks were selectively clipped and weaponised online by Restore supporters and party figures in an “all-out attack on my character.” She says Lowe stopped contacting her and the organisation cut her off “for daring to suggest we also heed the women in this country who are not white.”
She told The Telegraph: “I don’t think Rupert Lowe is a bad or evil man. But I do think that some of the people he has running his party are. And I think that if he fails to clean house, he’ll be left with very little, very soon.” She added that she wishes she had never got involved with Restore.
Return to Reform and contrast in leadership
Minihane says she decided to rejoin Reform partly because of Farage’s response to a recent ITV documentary that featured undercover footage involving foreign donor payments and party staff. Farage’s decision to suspend some close aides demonstrated the “professionalism” and willingness to distance the party from “nasty, thuggish extremists” that she says is missing at Restore. “Until you can show an element of professionalism like that… the wider British public will never vote for you,” she said.
Lowe’s response and wider context
Lowe responded that he respects Minihane’s work on women’s safety and was open with her in their conversations. He noted that she has “landed at Reform” and that they will likely welcome her warmly. He dismissed the coverage as yet another “attempt to smear the party” and “increasingly hysterical” attacks “based in less and less reality,” offering instead to discuss Restore’s policy platform.
Great Yarmouth as a pressure group after his acrimonious split from Reform in 2025 and was registered as a party in February 2026.
It has attracted some former Reform councillors and activists, polled in the low single digits (around 4%), and took nearly 7% of the vote in the Makerfield by-election. Reform figures have warned that a sustained Restore presence could split the right-wing vote and help Labour. Other reporting has highlighted tensions inside Restore involving ethnonationalist or hardline elements, misogyny, and disputes over the party’s direction relative to Reform.
Minihane’s return highlights ongoing fragmentation on the British right between Reform’s broader electoral strategy and Restore’s more uncompromising stance, as well as the practical challenges of managing activist bases that include more extreme voices.
