Rupert Lowe, founder and leader of Restore Britain, is no stranger to announcing policies via social media. His X (formerly Twitter) timeline largely consists of posts pointing out what he feels is not right in the UK, and he promises policies that he feels will make the country great again. Some might say what appear as policy announcements are rants, not unlike those you might hear in a pub. One of his more recent is a pronouncement that Restore Britain would increase the speed limit to 80mph, which he claims will “back business, trust drivers, and get Britain moving.”
When I read this, my initial thought was this was more libertarian ranting, but I then decided to do some more digging into whether there was any substance to his claim and how workable it is.
“Back business”
Lowe implies that a faster speed limit will help business. The section of the M6 that would be classified as in the North West stretches approximately 100 miles. At a steady speed of 70mph this would take approximately 1 hour 26 minutes to navigate. Maintaining a constant speed of 80mph would take the approximate travel time down to 1 hour 15 minutes. Balanced against this “saving” of only 11 minutes are claims by organisations such as the Road Safety Foundation that the roads are unsafe for 80mph.
The M62 might well be the UK’s busiest east-west freight connection. Warrington Borough Council in its Freight and Logistics Strategy states that increased speed limits would lead to a higher incidence of crashes due to reduced reaction times to avoid collisions. Coupled with the increase in injury and damage, this would lead to more gridlock on the region’s roads, reducing reliability of delivery times and increasing costs for logistics providers. It also argues that increasing car speeds to 80mph increases the speed differential between cars and HGVs which also increases risk due to increased weaving in and out of lanes.
The model also predicts that increased speed limits would accelerate bottlenecks on busy stretches, forcing imposition of lower speed limits and causing further congestion.
Backing business? Are you sure Mr Lowe?
Trust the drivers?
Department for Transport figures show that 1,602 people were killed and an estimated 27,865 seriously injured in reported road collisions in Great Britain in 2024. There were 128,272 casualties across all injury severities. According to the car sales site car.co.uk: “Speed contributed to 59% of road deaths, with 21% involving an outright speed limit breach and 29% involving either a breach or travelling too fast for conditions.”
Trusting the driver seems a rather risky strategy in the light of this data.
“Get Britain moving”
Let us scrutinise Mr Lowe’s lofty rhetoric. In 2023, Lancashire was identified as the worst place in the country for traffic delays. Manchester also ranked as sixth worst in the same study.
One cause of this is the very high dependence on motorways, causing congestion issues. Another relates to driving behaviour. The RAC identifies a phenomenon called a “shockwave” traffic jam, where a driver at the front taps their brakes, causing a chain reaction of braking by other drivers which ultimately results in some drivers behind ending up stationary. Increasing speed limits to 80mph will not positively impact any of these causes. This calls into question the practicality and the consequences of Lowe’s proposed policy.
Scrutiny matters
Mr Lowe’s social media posts often seem to promise ideas with little substance as to how they would work in reality. As others have observed, similar contributions can encourage clicks and comments, and are sometimes referred to as “rage baiting”. Also, as one newspaper recently claimed, they tend to play a part in helping social media become a significant source of revenue. Mr Lowe has reportedly earned £931 per hour through the full range of his activity on X (formerly Twitter) this year.
I’ll be watching the sedate traffic heading up and down the Fylde coast at well below 80 miles per hour.
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