‘I know we’ll be seen as a culture wars Ukip’
In the six days since he launched a political party, actor Laurence Fox’s conversion from luvvie to leader has inspired as much support as criticism, he tells Christopher Hope
Actors are normally invited on to BBC Question Time to lend a dash of showbiz to what can be a tediously worthy late-night political programme.
They are not meant to be controversial. And they are most certainly not meant to use their appearance as a springboard to start a new political party. But that is exactly what Laurence Fox has done.
The 42-year-old actor, best known for playing James Hathaway in the TV drama series Lewis from 2006 to 2015, was invited on to the panel show in January. His straight-talking arguments – in which he declared that Britain is one of the most tolerant countries in Europe and claimed that “to call me a white privileged male is to be racist” – won rave reviews, and stinking notices in equal measure.
Fox did not stop there, engaging his critics with relish on Twitter as he took centre stage under the culture wars spotlight.
Nine months later, Fox – part of one of the biggest family acting dynasties in Britain, and who has two children with his former wife Billie Piper – is launching his own party, called Reclaim, to champion the right of people to say what they believe, without being shouted down. Or as Fox puts it: “Giving you a home.”
This week, to mark his move from playhouse to politics, he had the words “freedom” and “space” – his late mother’s favourite words – tattooed on his hands.
To discuss his plans we meet in the Red Lion pub, Westminster’s favourite watering hole, a stone’s throw from Parliament. Looking back on his conversion from luvvie to leader, he says “the acorn possibly got put in the ground after the Question Time explosion and then it grew”.
The reaction made Fox determined to fight back against “this very small, very, very angry minority of people who feel that they have absolutely every right to not be offended and therefore can control the language we use”.
Reclaim has been backed so far by a single £5 million donation from Jeremy Hosking, a Brexiteer former Conservative donor, who approached him about fronting up the new party in the summer. Fox says more cash is rolling in.
The party – which has three members of staff – is now fully funded for the next five years and weighing up dozens of candidates to stand in next May’s Scottish elections, as well as the local elections in England ahead of the 2024 general election. No polling has so far been carried out on whether Britain actually needs Reclaim – although some research was commissioned to see whether Fox’s name has “cut through”, he says.
He rejected other names such as Space, the Progress Party and the Freedom Party before alighting on Reclaim, which combines the Brexit message of taking back control with an Essex salvage yard.
“Every time I think of Reclaim, often I do think of a reclamation yard and I rather like it,” he says. (The name still has to win the approval of the Electoral Commission – registration papers go in next week.)
Yet it has struck a nerve since the news broke in last Sunday’s Telegraph. In the six days since, 10,000 people have registered their support.
Fox, 42, who lives in south-east London, says: “You’d be amazed that people – people who you would never think were particularly political – will approach you and say, ‘what can I do?’
“Yesterday I was stopped by an artist who paints family portraits and he started crying and saying, ‘I can’t, I’m sorry. I’m really literally terrified of saying anything.’ ”
He describes how his actor father, James Fox, visited a pub in Sheffield this week “and they all gave him a huge hug and clap, said, ‘Thank God for your son’.”
Fox is less certain on the detail of Reclaim’s policies, although he does express doubts about the Government’s handling of Covid-19, asking why ministers cannot just trust people not to spread the virus rather than impose restrictions.
He says: “I am playing and writing my own lines, which is actually extremely liberating. And you come across some people who really challenge you. They don’t just agree with you, as they often do on set.”
Fox reluctantly accepts that Reclaim will be seen as a “culture wars Ukip” because of the influence it might bring to bear on the Conservatives. This week, Amanda Milling, the party’s co-chairman, declared that Fox’s views were shared by the Tories.
“As much as I don’t think it’s probably the best comparison, I think it’s fair enough,” he says. He met Nigel Farage at a lunch in August but the pair
did not discuss a collaboration. “He’s made a great contribution to Brexit politics, whether you like him or not. And he’s a very significant figure. He’s not involved because this is my thing.”
A former Labour voter and Remain supporter, Fox is damning about Sir Keir Starmer, who this week completed his “unconscious bias training” and in the summer was photographed “taking the knee” to honour Black Lives Matter protesters.
He says: “I’ll never, ever vote Labour again with Keir Starmer in power because of taking the knee. It’s what he’s kneeling to that annoys me.
“I don’t see taking the knee as a gesture of solidarity, I see taking the knee as a gesture of subservience.
“If you engage the Black Lives Matter crowd on their mantra of the fact that we are all systemically racist and stuff like that, then you’ve lost the war already because you’re apologising for something that you are not.”
Fox sees “an element of white saviour” in the way that some public institutions are trying to right the wrongs of the past. He is aghast that his alma mater Rada (the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) might rename its George Bernard Shaw Theatre because of the playwright’s views on eugenics.
“This is not the Rada I remember. Or rather the one that produced Adrian Lester and David vid Harewood and all of these wonderful ful actors,” he says.
He adds: “I had a very threatening phone call from m one [actor] who I’d worked with for or six months. When n he phoned me, I heard him put it on loudspeaker and nd go ‘Shh!’ so I knew w there was a table of people there.
“I was warned several times that, unless I changed my tune, it would have an effect on my career. And then I was s warned formally that it t was certain to have a devastating ting effect on my career. areer.
“The problem m with doing that is – because I have a platform and because I believe very strongly in what I believe in – all you’re doing is empowering me. Threatening me doesn’t work.”
Fox is too scarred by his culture wars to recognise that, for the most part, the woke warriors are coming from a good place; trying to make the country a kinder place for everyone. He recently insisted that he would no longer date women under the age of 35, as they are “too woke” and “completely bonkers”.
I ask him if he is racist.
“No, but I can’t prove it. It’s like being in a madhouse – I’m not insane. This is the problem of where they want to play you. They want to play you on a field that we are all systemically racist, which is absolutely, categorically not true.”
This time last year, Fox was in Majorca, wearing hair extensions and playing David, a “woke” Mancunian former drug dealer in Netflix series White Lines. He hopes to get back to acting after the UK has got over its “very dangerous cultural blip”.
“I love showbusiness. I would love to be able one day to walk back on set, strong and stoical, and know that at least some of the people who’ve been quiet and saddened might come up and go, ‘thank you, mate, [I] can now have an opinion’.”
Fox recently set his Twitter account to delete old tweets after three months, so that he can change his mind politically w without fear of critics unearthin unearthing old views.
“You don’t w want someone to spend their life trawling back through every tweet you’ve ever done in y your life,” he explains, adding that he sees R Reclaim as a legacy pr project: “I feel d duty bound to d do it for my c children.”
‘I’m not racist, but I can’t prove it. It’s like being in a madhouse – I’m not insane’