The Background
Rupert Lowe, the British MP and former Brexit Party MEP, had previously been best known for his stewardship of Southampton F.C. into administration in 2009. His early career was spent in banking before founding a care home business. He returned to some degree of prominence when elected to represent Great Yarmouth as a Reform UK MP. Within far-right circles, the man dubbed “Britain’s Most Extreme MP” achieved peak fame over his falling out with Nigel Farage and Reform UK, leading to his departure from the party. The affair was a particularly vicious one, revealing visceral levels of animosity on the populist right of British politics. Here, we take a deep dive into the Rupert Lowe affair, its causes, the actors involved, and its consequences.
A fight for Elon Musk’s affections?
In December 2024, reports of Elon Musk, who had bankrolled Donald Trump’s successful 2024 presidential election campaign to the tune of $277 million, looking to donate up to $100 million to UK politics, specifically Reform UK, were in full circulation. Nick Candy, the new Reform UK treasurer, had vowed to out-raise any other UK party, and his attention had turned to the United States. Farage and Candy had met Musk at President-elect Donald Trump’s resort Mar-A-Lago, in Florida.
Hopes of a mega donation from Musk were deflated on January 5 2025, when Musk posted that “The Reform Party needs a new leader. Farage doesn’t have what it takes.” Around the same time, Musk was responding to and retweeting posts by Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe, saying the MP’s posts “make a lot of sense”.
Around the same time, Musk was responding to and retweeting posts by Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe, saying the MP’s posts “make a lot of sense”.
Perhaps fortunately for Farage, Musk’s views had little support in European countries as the plummeting sales of Tesla vehicles across the continent seemed to demonstrate. However, it’s easy to imagine that Farage would have felt somewhat embarrassed by this turn of events. Lowe spoke to the BBC on the 6th of January, saying that while he thanked Musk for his comments, he backed Farage as party leader. Farage put the difference of opinion with Musk down to a disagreement over Stephen-Yaxley Lennon. Interestingly, this is the same reason behind Farage’s departure from UKIP in 2018.
Lowe’s Daily Mail interview
Lowe’s support of Nigel Farage had clearly disappeared by the time of his interview with the Daily Mail, published on 5th March 2025. In it, he begins cautiously suggesting that “It’s too early to know whether Nigel will deliver the goods”, before expanding with comments on Farage’s leadership style:
“Nigel is a messianic figure who is at the core of everything but he has to learn to delegate, as not everything can go through one person”
If relations were strained before the interview, subsequent events strongly suggest that they had now snapped altogether.
Messy, very Messy
The fan became distinctly messy on 7th March 2025, just two days after the Daily Mail interview, when reports of Lowe’s suspension as a Reform MP were splashed all over the media. The Reform Chairman, Zia Yusuf, and Chief Whip Lee Anderson were quoted as saying that the suspension resulted from evidence of “derogatory and discriminatory remarks made about women” and the disabled. By now, events were moving very quickly. Media reports suggested that complaints had been made to parliamentary authorities and that the party had appointed a senior barrister to conduct an independent inquiry. Even more shocking, the party had reported its own MP to the police over alleged threats of violence, which appeared to be threats of violence aimed towards Zia Yusuf. No charges would result from this complaint. It quickly became apparent that this was a split that was not going to be repaired any time soon. Rupert Lowe’s response was to brand the “allegations outrageous and entirely untrue”. He would later accuse Reform UK of using “woke HR lawfare” that was “Unprecedented wickedness” and “despicable behaviour” [X Post 25/03/25].
The independent report, commissioned by Reform UK and conducted by Jacqueline Perry KC, found credible evidence that former MP, Rupert Lowe, and his team unlawfully harassed two female employees and fostered a “toxic” office culture. The report was published on 25th March 2025. Shortly after, a KC commissioned by Lowe would cast doubt on the reliability of the report’s findings, the relevant recent experience of the KC who had conducted the review and pointed out the unfairness of the process.
Rupert Lowe’s most detailed public description and response to the allegations against him came in an X post on 25/03/2025.
Publication of the KC’s review
Infighting flared up again on the 26th March 2025, over the publication of the barrister’s report into the allegations against Lowe. Reports in The Telegraph suggest that the barrister herself had been “disconcerted” by its early unscheduled publication. Lowe complained that Reform UK had named his employees in the report, something he had reported Farage for to the parliamentary authorities. It was also reported that all four staff members who were identified in the document had also referred both Mr Farage and Lee Anderson, Reform’s chief whip, to Parliament’s Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme.
Reaction on X and in the polls
In the rarified atmosphere of X, news of Lowe’s suspension and allegations ignited internecine warfare on the right of politics. Rupert Lowe had a dedicated far-right following on X who enthused over his obsessive posting about mass deportations. However, his popularity did not extend beyond X, and there was little or no evidence of damage to Reform in the opinion polls. On 7th March at the height of the affair, Reform was polling at 23-25%. A month later, the situation was basically the same, with no dips in between.
The ‘dementia’ claim
The row took a further undignified twist on 14 April 2025, when Lowe took to social media to claim that senior members of Reform UK had been briefing their media contacts that he was suffering from early-onset dementia, something he emphatically denied. It appears Lowe’s claim was based on Dan Wootton’s reporting of his first-hand knowledge of such briefings.
Media reports show that Lowe returned to the issue mid-May 2025, with more warnings of the consequences should Farage get into power. He made the following statement on X.
“If Farage were ever to control the vast power of the British state, I believe he would not hesitate to do to his adversaries what they have tried to do to me. With real power, I fear he would wield that immense responsibility to crush dissent – as he has done time and again over the years.”
The Aftermath
Lowe soon turned his attention to raising funds for a rape gang enquiry, an enquiry that – he pointedly reminded followers – had been promised by Nigel Farage but that had quietly been dropped. The episode and Musk’s earlier support had greatly boosted Lowe’s reach on X, which he was using to full effect to promote his views on deportations and his rape gang enquiry.
No charges would result from the police complaint against Rupert Lowe, and complaints to the parliamentary authorities were also not upheld against any MP. At the time, the Rupert Lowe affair seemed like it might harm Reform UK as it fed the narrative of division and personal animosity that had long plagued the far-right of British politics (and some would argue the far-left too). However, it soon became clear that polled support for the party in the country at large had not been affected.
Rupert Lowe focused on setting up first a rape gangs enquiry and then Restore Britain, self-described as “a movement for those who believe that we need to fundamentally change the way Britain is governed.” It would not be a political party, but it did have a membership that could be bought for £20. Apart from a reference to “thousands and thousands” posted on July 4th 2025, no information could be found on Restore Britain’s membership numbers. On the 22nd September 2025, Lowe was interviewed on TalkTV. He claimed that he had been “politically assassinated”, described Farage as a politician who “blows with the wind”, is “economical with the truth”, “mutates like the AIDS virus” and that while a Reform MP, Farage had attempted to edit his speeches. He concluded that Farage should never be prime minister. From Nigel Farage’s side, there has been far less comment, in fact, near silence, in the aftermath of the affair. His main statement on the row had been made in The Telegraph on 8th March 2025.
Final thoughts
The saga between Rupert Lowe and Nigel Farage remains one of the most acrimonious and high-profile fallouts in recent British political memory. It exposed deep fractures not only within Reform UK but also within the broader populist right, where strong personalities often collide. While Lowe has carved out a new niche in online activism and political commentary, and Farage remains the figurehead of Reform UK, the affair highlighted the risks of personality-driven politics and the fragility of unity in movements built around ideological volatility rather than institutional coherence. While the affair did nothing to harm Reform UK’s popularity, it added another name to the list of politicians Farage had fallen out with and gave further credence to those suggesting there may be an issue with his teamworking and ability to share the limelight.
