Politixia
Lowe gives the Reform leader “credit” for what he has achieved, and acknowledges a shared history over Brexit. “We all played our part in exposing the fact that the establishment didn’t respect the 2016 vote. They wanted to frustrate it.” But his admiration has definite limits: “I would have respected him more if he just said to me: ‘Look, you’re not for us. Go and be an independent.’ Instead, he tried to politically assassinate me.” At one point, the police were involved, after Reform alleged Lowe had made “threats of physical violence” against then-party chairman Zia Yusuf. “I can’t forgive them for that.”
The eldest of four boys, Lowe was born in 1957 into a prosperous family. His father, Patrick, ran Lowe & Oliver, an electrical and mechanical services company that gave the family both security and a sense of self-sufficiency. Educated at Radley College before studying estate management at the University of Reading, he looks back fondly on what he calls a “high-trust society”. “I loved my upbringing,” he says. “I don’t like Britain today.”
After university, Lowe moved into the City, working at Morgan Grenfell and Deutsche Bank during the years when London finance was expanding rapidly and rewards were plentiful for those who could navigate it. He later founded Secure Retirement, a care-home business which, in his telling, kept him closer to the realities of ageing, family responsibility and public services than most politicians ever experience.
His career rarely followed a conventional path. In 1997 he became chairman of Southampton Football Club. “The best day of my life was getting to the cup final in 2003,” he says, breaking into a grin. Politics, meanwhile, remained a constant undercurrent. His opposition to the Maastricht Treaty drew him into the Referendum Party, for which he stood in 1997. After years spent in business and campaigning, he eventually joined the Brexit Party and became an MEP during the turbulent years that followed the referendum.
When Parliament is not sitting and constituency duties allow, Lowe retreats to a farm in the Cotswolds. He describes himself as a “provincial boy” – a phrase that captures something important about how he sees both himself and the country. A strain of rural pride runs through his politics: a belief in land, in things you can touch and measure. “I love farming,” he says. “You can’t cheat it, because you have to respect nature.”
He has four children – Fred, Angus, Jemima and Iona – each with their own lives and political views. “Most voted to leave. All are independent-minded.” His wife, Nicky, a former journalist, is “fully behind what I’m doing now”, though he admits that frontline politics has altered the retirement they had imagined. “We started to live a very enjoyable life with our dogs and horses,” he says, “and now I’m in the thick of it in the Commons loony bin aged 68.”
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