Reform UK From terraces to Commons, new MP Rupert Lowe divides opinion

Rupert Lowe is used to dividing opinion. During his years as chair of Southampton football club, such was the antipathy among some fans that many would engage in the abusive chant: "Swing Lowe, Swing Rupert Lowe."

- Ben Quinn

"Understandably, having thousands of people chanting such offensive language is not a pleasant position to be in, but we live in a country with free speech and we must respect that. It did put pressure on my health," the new Reform UK MP said this week.

This month, he angered teachers' unions even before he was sworn in after saying he had a list of schools where he claimed teachers were allegedly "pushing" critical views about the populist rightwing party.

As one of five new Reform MPs, Lowe's Great Yarmouth seat was arguably a more challenging target than those of his colleagues Nigel Farage and Richard Tice - it was Labour under Blair and Tory under Johnson - but in Lowe, the party also has an MP who comes to Westminster with decades of business experience.

Like Farage and Tice, Oxfordborn Lowe is a former public school boy intent on waging a libertarian revolt against Britain's "establishment". After university, he was a commodity broker in the City and worked in securities in Japan. When British football clubs emerged as attractive financial assets in the 1990s, he became chair of Southampton after a reverse takeover.