Rupert Lowe MP launched new national political party Restore Britain in February (Alamy)
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Restore Britain MP Rupert Lowe received more than £10,000 from X in a single month, having earned more than £70,000 from the platform since being elected.
Having been suspended from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in March last year over bullying complaints – which he denied – Lowe has since set up his own political party, Restore Britain.
Lowe has engaged in a public feud with his former party since being suspended, while at the same time, his profile on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, has continued to grow.
Last September, PoliticsHome reported that Lowe had earned nearly £40,000 from posting on X since his election in 2024, far surpassing Reform UK MPs Farage, Richard Tice and Lee Anderson.
By the end of May 2026, Lowe had earned £72,441, including registering more than £10,000 in payments in April alone. PoliticsHome analysis of Parliament’s register of MPs’ interests shows that Lowe remains the highest-earning UK politician on the platform by a wide margin.
Farage has earned £19,866 in total from X, while Tice and Anderson have earned more than £6,953 and £6415 respectively.
Since November 2024, when US billionaire Elon Musk bought the platform, X has shifted to a different monetisation model, paying users based on engagement from Premium subscribers rather than advertising revenue. Creators can earn up to 25 per cent of subscription income based on likes, reposts and replies, with Premium+ engagements worth more.
Lowe’s posts frequently include provocative language and have consistently driven high levels of engagement, with his reach also often amplified by Musk himself, who has more than 240m followers. In June last year, Musk appeared to signal support for Lowe’s breakaway movement, Restore Britain, by replying to Lowe’s launch post with a series of Union Jack emojis. He appeared to declare support for the party again on Sunday, quoting an X post by Lowe with the caption “Restore Britain”.
However, there is no evidence that Musk directly controls how much individual users are paid.
Lowe previously told PoliticsHome: “If I were in politics to make money, I wouldn’t donate my entire net MP salary to charity in my constituency. Would I?
“This is the most expensive job I’ve ever had. Trust me – if I wanted financial gain, I wouldn’t be doing this.”
Restore Britain, which campaigns for hard-right policies on issues such as immigration, could threaten Reform UK’s chances of victory at next month’s Makerfield by-election by splitting the right-wing vote. A Survation poll this week put Labour candidate Andy Burnham in the lead on 43 per cent, with Reform’s Robert Kenyon close behind on 40 per cent. Restore Britain candidate Rebecca Shepherd was on 7 per cent.
Luke Charters, MP for York Outer, has also become the first Labour MP to register payment from X, having registered £556 from the platform in May.
Charters has been deliberately using more provocative language in his posts on X to compete with right-wing voices on the platform, having taken advice from figures in the US Democratic Party.
He told PoliticsHome: “If progressives aren’t on X, we hand it to the right and in the age of new world populism, that matters. That’s why I changed my approach last September, getting stuck in and making the case for progressive values in a space that needs them.”
Charters is donating his X income to local causes, including a hospice in York Outer.
“So to every person replying to my tweets calling out right-wing populism, you’re funding hospice care in York,” he said.
“Please keep it coming.”
A Sky News investigation in November found a “clear imbalance of content promoted on the platform, with right-wing voices dominating and the algorithm pushing posts to new users that don’t align with their interests”.
This month, X has been accused of failing to honour commitments made to the UK communications regulator, after dozens of racist posts targeting ethnic minority public figures remained online for more than 48 hours after being reported.
This came after X made a voluntary agreement to review and assess suspected illegal terrorist and hate content flagged through its dedicated UK illegal content reporting tool within an average of 24 hours of being reported, calculated over a three-month period. The platform also said it would review and assess at least 85 per cent of UK suspected illegal terrorist and hate content reported through the tool within a maximum of 48 hours.
Ofcom said it will monitor X’s performance “closely”, with the platform expected to submit performance data to Ofcom every quarter over a year.