The ugly inside: Rupert Lowe and the Reform civil war

This guest article was written by Resistance Street. Rupert Lowe MP was sent a draft of this article and given more than forty-eight hours to comment but did not respond.

A former Labour councillor has reacted to the civil war between Reform UK’s Rupert Lowe and Nigel Farage, with a hard hitting summary of his own long term experience of Lowe’s conduct as chair of Southampton Football Club.

Perry McMillan, who was an elected Labour councillor for the Bitterne Ward in Southampton, was also the chairman of the Southampton Independent Supporters Association for nearly ten years. In that position he experienced numerous meetings and dealings – both private and public – with Rupert Lowe and says that the recent ruptures within Reform UK do not surprise him in the least.

McMillan, also a long term trade union activist and shop steward, spoke candidly about his long relationship with Lowe.

I have to be honest and I always found Rupert Lowe to be one of the most unpleasant, arrogant racist men I’ve ever had to deal with politically. When the Sikh community in Southampton had concerns about the new stadium the club wanted to build at St Marys, we met with Lowe about it and it was crystal clear that in his eyes he did not see that community as being even worthy of the right to a viewpoint. What else could anybody think when he shouted ‘What’s it got to do with a bunch of bloody rag-heads?’

McMillan and others present were astonished by Lowe’s racist outburst but had already shared concerns about his attitudes with City Chiefs, that after previous controversial discussions,

It has to be stressed that this was during a very sensitive period of community relations energies, but also at a time when Southampton Football Club under Lowe, had dragged its heels for a long period before becoming the very last club in the Premier League to sign up to the ‘Kick Racism Out of Football’ charter. Lowe adamantly did not think the club should have to sign up and it took a lot of pressure to make that happen.

By this point McMillan and others had already become aware of certain distasteful ideological beliefs held by Lowe, these too having surfaced in meetings based around the football club and its new stadium plans. McMillan said:

At another meeting, after a short political discussion, Lowe asked a colleague of mine ‘But surely you believe leadership comes from breeding?’ My colleague was stunned and so was I, because it was crystal clear that Lowe was deadly serious with the question. He believes in certain theories of eugenics, which to be honest, given the rest of his political leanings is hardly surprising.

Over the following years, McMillan and his colleagues got used to the aggressive side of Lowe’s character.

There were occasions when he literally behaved like a public school ‘Flashman’ character, screaming down the phone like a berserk lunatic to people I know. He was rude to many other supporters during calls too. These were invariably fans who’d perhaps spoken in opposition to him at meetings or had maybe written critical letters to the local press. It was obvious Lowe hated it when fans criticised him and he’d go out of his way to make contact with some of them. He spent a lot of time as chairman of a football club on such energies and I’d say a good deal of the calls were intimidatory in nature. One of his favourite tactics was quoting from the Bible, Old Testament scriptures, crazy Trump-style things but always in that plummy, Oxford English accent. He’s a serial bully in my book and all this stuff now is classic Lowe.

McMillan says that Lowe’s bullying interventions did not stop there. He leaned heavily on local newspaper editors to ensure that critical coverage was eventually airbrushed out of publication:

One of our committee had a regular Saturday night column in the local football pink paper and was critical of Lowe on a number of occasions. Lowe threatened to ban access to the ground for the paper’s football journalists – he did exactly the same thing to the Daily Mirror – and that column was eventually replaced by others which took a far less honest look at the club’s situation. This again was typical of how Lowe operated and to purport that he believes in ‘free speech’ is an absolute joke!

With Lowe’s attempts to stifle the media, the Southampton supporters’ fanzine ‘The Ugly Inside’ found itself taking the lead role in opposition to his behaviour, McMillan says:

Everything I’m talking about here was originally published in the ‘Ugly Inside’ fanzine, which back then was read by thousands of people in Southampton. The fanzine identified the fascist nature of his beliefs and in those days provided a key service to supporters. And Rupert Lowe damned well knows that too!

In Lowe’s years at Southampton, the club suffered two relegations and had a dozen different managers. This did not stop him from believing that he could dictate the future of English football. McMillan recalls his shock at such aspects:

It was truly unbelievable. After a couple of years in charge and with no background in football at all – hockey was his game at Oxford – Lowe wrote a massive thesis entitled ‘The Future of English Football’. He then delivered this to the Football Association. In it he laid out his views on everything in the game, including the pyramid structure and how it should be run, right up to the England team. It was a staggeringly audacious document but it was then that his beliefs that leadership comes from breeding, really hit home with us.

Not surprisingly, the FA completely ignored Lowe’s wild thesis. In the end, amongst much anger from shareholders and supporters and with the club’s parent company suspended from Stock Market trading when its share price collapsed, Lowe was finally forced to resign and departed from professional football.

McMillan reflects on Lowe’s final days as Southampton chairman:

Even then his gigantic ego was unable to accept that he held executive responsibility for sending Southampton FC into administration and almost out of business. This was after we’d met with Lawrie McMenemy and major shareholders who were terrified the club would actually die. But on the day Lowe resigned he sent a text to one of our committee members, saying ‘A lot of all this is your fault.’ Again, just typical of the arrogance that defines him. When things go wrong after Lowe has thrown his weight around – as they are now in Reform – he just cannot then stop himself from playing the victim.

“The most dangerous far-right MP’

McMillan clarifies as to how he and his associates fully expected to see a scenario like the present civil war explode in Reform:

When we first saw him emerge as a Brexit Party MEP, then as a Reform UK MP, we absolutely knew it would be impossible for him to accept the leadership and authority of somebody else, no matter who that person was. So, no, it’s no surprise at all to see all this and Nigel Farage has now learned it to his cost too. But now I’m seeing people on Facebook saying they think Lowe would make a good prime minister.

That is a tragic example of the state of affairs in Britain 2025. This guy – behind all his local community work for constituents – is the most dangerous far-right MP to enter parliament in our lifetimes. He is deadly serious when he talks about one million deportations and his social media outpourings are rabidly extremist. But crucially that also tells us a lot about Farage and Reform. Farage clearly thought Lowe was an excellent addition to his team at first but that was a huge mistake. A lot of this has to be seen not just as a party civil war but as a glaring exposure of what Reform UK really represents.”

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