Rupert Lowe MP

Rupert James Graham Lowe was born in Oxford on 31 October 1957. He was educated at the Dragon School and Radley College, and went on to study estate management at the University of Reading. He married Nicola Chapman in 1986, and they have four children.

Lowe built his early career in the City of London, working for Morgan Grenfell, Deutsche Bank and Barings, and sitting on the board of the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange (LIFFE). With Andrew Cowen he co-founded Secure Retirements, a stock-market-listed care home company, which later became his route into football.

Lowe became chairman of Southampton in 1996, after a reverse takeover involving Secure Retirements gave the club a stock-market listing. During his first decade in charge the club left The Dell for the 32,000-seat St Mary's Stadium, which opened in 2001, and in 2003 reached the FA Cup final and qualified for the UEFA Cup. He also sat on the Football Association's board as a Premier League representative.

Southampton were relegated from the Premier League in 2005, and on 30 June 2006 Lowe resigned under pressure from supporters after the club failed to win promotion back. He returned as chairman in July 2008 but left the board when the holding company, Southampton Leisure Holdings, went into administration on 2 April 2009. He later owned the non-league club Garforth Town, from 2012 to 2015.

A Conservative Party member until 1993, when he left over the Maastricht Treaty, Lowe stood for the Referendum Party in Cotswold at the 1997 general election. In May 2019 he was elected as a Brexit Party Member of the European Parliament for the West Midlands. He sat as a non-attached member, serving on the budgets and constitutional affairs committees, from 2 July 2019 until the UK left the European Union on 31 January 2020.

He returned to front-line politics in March 2023 as Reform UK's business and agriculture spokesman. At the Kingswood by-election on 15 February 2024 he finished third for Reform UK with 10.4% of the vote.

At the general election on 4 July 2024 Lowe won Great Yarmouth for Reform UK, taking the seat from the Conservatives with 14,385 votes (35.3%) and a majority of 1,426. On 8 January 2025 he introduced the Quantitative Easing (Prohibition) Bill, a Ten Minute Rule bill to prohibit quantitative easing and stop the government indemnifying any losses from it. Since 21 October 2025 he has sat on the Public Accounts Committee, which scrutinises government spending.

In early March 2025, after Lowe had publicly questioned the party's leadership and direction, Reform UK suspended him and withdrew the whip on 7 March. The party said it had received bullying complaints from two women working in his offices, had appointed a King's Counsel to investigate them, and had reported to the police alleged threats against its chairman, Zia Yusuf. Lowe denied all of the allegations and said they followed his criticism of the leadership.

On 14 May 2025 the Crown Prosecution Service announced that no charges would be brought, saying there was insufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction. UK Parliament's records show Lowe sitting as an independent MP from 7 March 2025 until 19 March 2026.

Lowe launched Restore Britain on 30 June 2025 as a membership movement rather than a party, promising to build a policy platform together with its members. In December 2025 he founded Great Yarmouth First, a local party for his constituency, and became its chairman; it was registered with the Electoral Commission on 4 March 2026.

On 13 February 2026 he relaunched Restore Britain as a national political party working with local partner parties, and published its 10 Objectives. The party was entered on the Electoral Commission's register on 20 March 2026, and UK Parliament lists Lowe as its MP from that day. The formation story and timeline cover the party's growth in more detail.

As Restore Britain's first MP, Lowe leads the party both in the Commons and in the country. In the May 2026 local elections Great Yarmouth First, which he chairs, won all 10 seats it contested in his constituency. He then led the party through its first parliamentary contest, the Makerfield by-election in June, and the Greater Manchester mayoral by-election in July.

On 2 August 2026 he publicly offered Reform UK leader Nigel Farage an electoral alliance on five conditions, including the deportation of every illegal migrant and a referendum on the death penalty. An MRP poll commissioned by Restore Britain and published on 24 September 2026 projected the party winning Great Yarmouth if a general election were held then. MRP models describe a polling snapshot, and are not a forecast of the next election. His party's programme is set out in our policy guide.