Rupert James Graham Lowe (born 31 October 1957) is a British politician who is the leader of the ethno-nationalist and far-right party Restore Britain and has been the member of Parliament (MP) for Great Yarmouth since 2024. Elected for Reform UK, he sat as an independent from March 2025 to March 2026 following the suspension of the party whip. Lowe founded the political organisation Restore Britain on 30 June 2025, and registered it as an official political party on 20 March 2026, becoming the party's sole MP on the same day. He was a member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the West Midlands from 2019 to 2020. Lowe has faced political and media scrutiny due to his views on ethnicity and migration, and due to controversies surrounding the membership admissions policies of Restore Britain under his leadership.
Before entering politics, Lowe worked in banking and business and was the chairman of Southampton F.C. from 1996 to 2006 and then from 2008 to 2009, when it entered administration. At the 2019 European Parliament election, Lowe was elected as an MEP for the West Midlands, representing the Brexit Party, which later became Reform UK. He held this role until the UK's withdrawal from the European Union in 2020. Lowe entered the House of Commons at the 2024 general election as MP for Great Yarmouth and was appointed Reform UK's Business and Agriculture Spokesman. In March 2025, he had the whip suspended due to legal accusations, days after criticising Reform UK leader Nigel Farage.
Early life and education Rupert James Graham Lowe was born on 31 October 1957 in Oxford. He was privately educated at the Dragon School and Radley College, and studied estate management at the University of Reading.
Career After graduating, Lowe started his career in the City of London for Morgan Grenfell, Deutsche Bank and Barings Bank. He was also a board member of the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange. He founded Secure Retirements, a quoted care home provider, with Andrew Cowen, later the Southampton F.C. vice-chairman.
Southampton F.C. chairmanship In the mid-1990s, the board of Southampton F.C. were looking to float the club on the London Stock Exchange, a long and costly procedure. Therefore, they attempted a reverse takeover as a way to reduce costs. They needed to find a company that had already floated and take it over while effectively being taken over themselves. Lowe's Secure Retirements, which ran nursing homes, was identified as a candidate. The resultant group was renamed Southampton Leisure Holdings. After the deal was completed, Lowe became chairman of the club.
In the summer of 1997, Southampton's manager, Graeme Souness, left after just one season in charge, as did the director of football and former manager Lawrie McMenemy. This came as a shock to the local press, who regarded McMenemy as 'Mr Southampton'; he had previously managed the club from 1973 to 1985, guiding it to FA Cup success in 1976 and finishing second in the league in 1984. Lowe guided the club from their old stadium into the 32,000-seater St Mary's Stadium, which opened in 2001, and the club continued to follow a long-standing policy of selling players for high prices. The players Dean Richards and Kevin Davies were sold to Tottenham Hotspur for £8 million and Blackburn Rovers for £7 million, respectively.
During his ownership of the club, the Saints maintained their Premier League status into the 21st century, despite having been in regular relegation battles since the early 1990s. There were eight managers during his tenure. Dave Jones was put on "gardening leave" in January 2000 amid a criminal investigation, though he was later cleared of all charges. Jones was succeeded by Glenn Hoddle, who left just over a year later to join Tottenham Hotspur. Lowe then appointed Stuart Gray, but Gray was swiftly replaced by Gordon Strachan after a poor start to the 2001–02 season. Strachan guided the Saints to a secure 11th-place finish.
In 2003, Southampton reached the FA Cup Final, and qualified for the UEFA Cup for the first time in nearly 20 years, and also finishing eighth in the league; it was their highest finish for well over a decade. Strachan resigned in February 2004, and Lowe and the board took the decision to replace him with Paul Sturrock before the end of the season. Sturrock himself left the club by mutual consent within six months, despite achieving good results during his time in charge. It was alleged that Lowe attempted to interfere in team selection after consulting the former head coach of the England national rugby union team Clive Woodward, who was being approached about a possible role at the club at the time.
Lowe appointed Harry Redknapp manager of Southampton in December 2004. Redknapp had quit as manager of Southampton's south-coast rivals Portsmouth two weeks earlier. Southampton were relegated in 2005 and Lowe appointed Woodward as Director of Football of Southampton in July 2005. Redknapp resigned as manager in December 2005 and subsequently rejoined Portsmouth. Lowe won a libel case against The Times in 2005, relating to a column by the sportswriter Martin Samuel, who alleged that Lowe had treated Jones "shabbily" following the latter's suspension after he was accused of child abuse charges on which he was ultimately acquitted. Lowe was awarded £250,000, which he pledged to donate to charity.
On 30 June 2006, Lowe resigned under huge pressure from club supporters, including the newly formed Saints Trust, following the club's failure to win promotion back to the Premier League. Michael Wilde, a new investor in Southampton Leisure Holdings, led a new team of directors in taking over the club. The Saints were beaten in the 2006–07 Championship playoffs and narrowly avoided relegation on the final day of the 2007–08 season. In July 2008, Lowe returned as the chairman of Southampton Leisure Holdings. At an annual general meeting (AGM) on 23 December 2008, he received several calls to resign from former chairman Leon Crouch and from fans and shareholders at the meeting. On 2 April 2009, Southampton Leisure Holdings was placed into administration, resulting in Lowe's resignation from the board.
Garforth Town In December 2012, Lowe purchased Garforth Town of the Northern Premier League, along with the franchise operation of Socatots & Brazilian Soccer Schools linking up again with Simon Clifford, who had been employed as a Southampton coach in 2005. Lowe left the club in January 2015.Change of ownership at Garforth Northern Counties East League, 20 January 2015
Football Association Lowe has served as a member of the executive board of The Football Association as a Premier League representative and as an FA Councillor and on the FA Cup committee.
Career before parliament
Lowe was a member of the Conservative Party until 1993, when he left the party after questioning the Maastricht Treaty. He stood for election as the Referendum Party candidate for The Cotswolds at the 1997 general election and came fourth. He won a seat for the Brexit Party in the West Midlands constituency at the 2019 European Parliament election in the United Kingdom. Lowe had planned to be the Brexit Party Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for the Dudley North constituency of the UK Parliament, but he ultimately withdrew. In a January 2020 speech in the European Parliament, he questioned the cause of Australian bushfires: "It's disappointing that climate change has been blamed as the primary cause of these devastating bushfires by both our Parliament and other so-called climate experts. The cult of climate change marches on with no definitive evidence to support or deny the factual accuracy of their assertions.""Devastating Bushfires in Australia and other extreme weather events as a consequence of Climate Change (debate)" , Verbatim report of proceedings of the European Parliament, Monday, 13 January 2020 – Strasbourg. Quoted in
In March 2023, Lowe returned to politics as Reform UK's Business and Agriculture Spokesman. He contested the 2024 Kingswood by-election, finishing in third place, surpassing 10% and achieving Reform's best-ever by-election result. This was bettered later the same day by Ben Habib's 13% of the vote in the Wellingborough by-election.
Member of Parliament
In the 2024 general election on 4 July, Lowe stood for the Great Yarmouth constituency, and won, gaining 35.3 percent of the vote. After his election, he compiled a list of schools in his constituency where he said that teachers were biased against Reform during the election campaign, saying he would be meeting with headteachers to discuss the allegations. He has also pledged to donate his MP salary to a different local charity or worthy cause each month.
In January 2025, the American businessman Elon Musk, who had endorsed Reform UK, called on Nigel Farage to resign as leader, and then praised Lowe. Lowe thanked Musk, but reiterated his support for Farage. The dispute between Musk and Farage stemmed from Musk's endorsement of political activist Tommy Robinson, whom Farage has rejected; Lowe said Robinson should be acknowledged for "exposing these [child rape] gangs" but called him "not right for Reform".
On 8 January 2025, Lowe brought in a Ten Minute Rule Bill to ban quantitative easing, praising Argentinian president Javier Milei and looking forward to Musk working with American president Donald Trump, before saying "The cost of government should be covered by taxes alone, limiting the growth of excessive statism" which he said was linked to "a general moral decline in society". Also in January 2025, Lowe voted along with other Reform UK MPs to block the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill with a motion that called for a new national inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal. The amendment was defeated at 364 votes to 111, a majority of 253 against the amendment.
On 6 March 2025, in an interview with the Daily Mail, Lowe criticised the governance of Reform UK as "a protest party led by the Messiah", suggesting he might leave the party if things did not change, and saying it was too early to tell whether Farage would make a good prime minister. Farage disputed Lowe's criticism of himself and Reform UK, describing his personal following as a good thing, and went on to suggest Lowe's remarks were driven by a desire to be prime minister himself. In the same Daily Mail interview, Lowe stated he thought that MPs' pay should be increased to about £250,000 a year with the size of the House of Commons halved, and described the BBC as a "cancer at the heart of Britain".
In June 2026 he published The Rape Gang Inquiry Report, an unofficial crowd-funded report that alleged that at least 250,000 white girls were subjected to "repeated rape, gang rape, trafficking, torture, pregnancy, forced Islamic conversion and lifelong trauma", while acknowledging imprecision over the figure, stating this is because the numbers were not recorded. It also alleged that the police, social services, schools, the National Health Service, licensing authorities, and governments allowed the gangs to operate "with impunity", and that these crimes have been happening since the 1950s. The report does not support the 250,000 figure with original data, but draws on extant material, including advocacy material (such as that of the evangelical group Christian Concern), and has been criticised as inaccurate and misleading. The Police Service of Northern Ireland stated that "they can find no evidence that suggest any of the findings are true."
Bullying allegations and suspension from Reform UK