FORMER Saints chairman and Reform UK candidate Rupert Lowe has won Great Yarmouth, taking the seat from the Conservatives.

Mr Lowe was chairman of Saints between 1996-2006 and again from 2008 to 2009, before quitting with the club in administration.

Reform won four seats amid a Labour landslide, with leader Nigel Farage joined by Lee Anderson, party chairman Richard Tice and Mr Lowe in being elected to Parliament.

After his election, Mr Lowe said: "I’m honoured to be elected as Great Yarmouth’s Reform MP - this is the start of the radical change that the area desperately needs.

"I’m going to spend some short time with my family, and then the real work starts. Thank you to everyone who supported me - we made history." 

Mr Lowe received 14,385 votes (35.3 per cent) in Great Yarmouth, with Labour's Keir Cozens second on 12,959 and Tory James Clarke third with 10,034 on a 55.74 per cent turnout.

Mr Lowe was a Member of the European Parliament for West Midlands for six months in 2019 as a long-term Brexiteer.

Mr Lowe, 66, stood as a Referendum Party general election candidate in The Cotswolds in 1997, finishing fourth.

Mr Lowe, speaking in 2019, told The Athletic that he was surprised to find himself such a deeply unpopular figure in Southampton.

He said: “It is extraordinary how — and I’ve never quite understood it, I tended not to say too much — it is extraordinary how there did seem to be…

“If you look at what I did for Southampton, I delivered the stadium on time and on budget, I built up the youth academy, and again, they’ve had lots of money from players. I felt I did a pretty good job."