Restore Britain activist Lucy White tried to enlist Britain’s wartime dead in support of her politics. One short challenge from Sky News exposed the problem with that argument.
White was speaking to Sky’s Tom Cheshire when the discussion turned to immigration, ethnicity and her claim that previous generations would be horrified by modern Britain.
Cheshire pointed out something rather difficult to reconcile with White’s version of patriotism:
“The other thing that your ancestors fought against in World War II was an ideology that did class people on the basis of their ethnicity.”
White briefly stalled before answering:
“Yeah, but, well… what we say is, if you look at the state of the country now, people would not have fought for the current state of Britain.”
It was not an answer to the point Cheshire had made.
White had invoked the Second World War while promoting politics centred on ancestry and ethnicity. Cheshire reminded her that Nazi Germany built its state around racial classification, stripped people of their rights according to their heritage and murdered millions under that system.
White responded by claiming people who fought between 1939 and 1945 would not have fought for modern Britain. That is impossible to prove, and it also ignores who many of those people actually were.
The part of British war history White left out
Britain did not fight the Second World War alone, nor was the force fighting under the British flag exclusively white or born in Britain.
The Indian Army grew to approximately 2.5 million personnel during the war. According to figures recorded in Hansard, those forces included about 700,000 Muslims, 900,000 Hindus, 150,000 Sikhs, 120,000 Gurkhas and 90,000 Indian Christians.
Thousands of people from the Caribbean served in the RAF, while troops and support personnel from Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other parts of the Empire and Commonwealth contributed to the Allied war effort.
They fought in Europe, North Africa and Asia. Many never returned home.
That history makes White’s argument especially peculiar. Some of the people whose service she was using to justify her position came from the same parts of the world that Restore’s politics now treats as a threat to British identity.
Her claim also assumes that the wartime generation held one shared political view which can be neatly transferred to an argument taking place more than 80 years later. It cannot.
Some fought against fascism. Some fought out of patriotism, duty or economic necessity. Some were conscripted. Others volunteered from countries under British colonial rule. Turning millions of different people into a single imaginary endorsement for Restore Britain requires leaving most of the history out.
Who is Lucy White?
White is a right-wing activist associated with Restore Britain who has appeared as a political commentator on GB News and TalkTV. She has also been described as a public policy specialist.
She attracted widespread criticism in 2025 after arguing that Conservative MP Nusrat Ghani should not hold a senior position in the Commons because she was born in Pakistan.
White wrote:
“There should not be a single person born in Pakistan in the UK House of Commons.”
Ghani grew up in Birmingham, was elected to Parliament in 2015 and became the first female Muslim minister to speak from the Commons despatch box. She is now the MP for Sussex Weald and serves as Chairman of Ways and Means, making her the Commons’ senior deputy speaker.
TalkTV subsequently said White’s remarks were “reprehensible” and that it had no plans to invite her back. White denied that the post was racist and argued that British rules governing who can enter Parliament were too weak.
She has also questioned the suitability of politicians including Shabana Mahmood on the basis of their Pakistani heritage.
What is Restore Britain?
Restore Britain is led by Great Yarmouth MP Rupert Lowe, who entered Parliament as a Reform UK candidate before falling out with Nigel Farage and leaving the party.
Originally launched as a pressure group, Restore became a political party in February 2026. Its policies include mass deportations, much tighter citizenship rules, the removal of benefits from foreign nationals, a referendum on restoring the death penalty and the abolition of public funding for the BBC.
Its own immigration policy says legally resident foreign nationals could face deportation for failing to integrate, claiming benefits or being unable to speak English. It adds: “If that means millions go, then millions go.”
Lowe has recently tried to negotiate an arrangement with Reform, arguing that the two parties should cooperate against Labour. His conditions included mass deportations “including women and children”, a ban on the burqa, restrictions on legal migration and a referendum on capital punishment.
White’s comments therefore did not arrive in isolation. They sit within a party whose definition of belonging is deliberately narrower than citizenship alone.
The difficulty comes when that politics is dressed up as a defence of the people who fought fascism.
The reaction
The exchange spread quickly after @gingerrtom shared the clip and wrote:
“Watch Lucy White get absolutely cooked on Sky News after trying to use the war to push her racist ideology. The stutter killed me.”
chatting about "the state of the country" and then comparing it to the 30's and 40's is fucking crazy.
@CardozoJohnson raised the contribution made by troops from outside Britain:
“She doesn’t know her history at all. African countries and India under the British crown contributed and fought during WW2. Lucy u need to visit Imperial War Museum to sharpen your brain.”
@allnewtomorrow offered a harsher interpretation:
“She is just admitting she would have fought with/for the Nazis in WW2.”
And @Zurtruy85 could not understand how White had failed to anticipate Cheshire’s response:
“Flummoxed by such a simple line which she must have known would’ve been thrown back at her when bringing up WW2.
“Not one braincell on display in that party.”
White tried to claim the wartime generation for Restore Britain. Cheshire did not need a speech to challenge her. He simply pointed out what that generation had been fighting against.
Joe Connor is a UK-based reporter specialising in politics, public policy, and national affairs. He has previously contributed to publications including The London Economic (JOE Media Group) and Spotted News.
At The Daily Britain, he covers Westminster politics, elections, and breaking political developments, alongside in-depth analysis of policy decisions and their real-world impact.
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