Laurence Fox on his new political party, a £5 million donation and 'wokeness' | Chopper's Politics

it's christmas podcast but with me today is lawrence fox the founder of the new party called reclaim welcome to the podcast lawrence welcome to the red lion pub thank you very much for having me you've been spotted here recently drinking drinking with tory mps why is this well i tell you something i've noticed about politics there are some similarities between politics and acting in terms and showbiz in terms of the quantities of being consumed by the relative participants now you've launched your new party called reclaim that was um in the sunday telegraph last weekend it emerged and you talked about it for the first time how was your last five days been as the leader of new party very busy yeah it's been it's been very interesting though because as an actor what happens is you someone picks you up in a mercedes in the morning because they don't trust you to drive yourself to work then you get out of a mercedes and someone goes and gets you breakfast and you don't have to think and then if you say anything everyone just nods and goes um yes wisdom is emerging from the mountain the actor the actor is speaking everyone be quiet and then you realize that that's all an act on their behalf well i mean i realized it quite early on yes um so the last uh period what i've been working on reclaim has been um a rude awakening into the fact that you know people push back with their thinking which is great actually i've really enjoyed it totally there's a bit of acting isn't there in politics as much as actual acting you'd hope there is a bit because actually one has to present oneself you know it's easier the line to take lawrence the what the line to take yes you need to know what the lie the take is don't you on any issue you do need to know what line to take is on any issue sorry would you know what lines to take on your party yes yes yes you're quite from you you've worked them all out well yeah i think it's uh if you apply this simple principle that i apply it kind of applies to almost everything doesn't it so what is the point of reclaim i mean as a feeling of you know take back control we saw in the brexit debate it it it's giving it's people taking back what they have before and they've lost is that the point of something well i suppose you know we were we were heading in the right direction as far as um in the truest sense of the word progressive weren't we as a society and then suddenly things started to grow into a halt and then if anything go backwards and i suppose that um began with the freedom of speech thing and the right to offend and um yes in order to one has to reclaim the conversation the ability to have the conversation and the only way to have a decent conversation is in a reasoned way multifaceted way instead of this simple univariant analysis that the hard lefty wokey chums that i love so much are um insisting that we talk at what point do you want to start a party when does the moment come to you it's an evolutionary aspect isn't it so um i did i think i did question time and then in january that was in january was it yes it was an interesting time yes and then i obviously didn't realize that saying something which i think it was my first exact my first example of saying something that i genuinely felt and didn't think was in any way controversial the mega market question you had there the meghan markle question their uh what who would be the best laid labour leader question i mean all of it essentially was it was i was hopping around the minefield like you wouldn't believe it was hilarious it needs to be a woman was it was someone shammy jacobart was on the panel i think from memory and she said of course it should be a woman obviously or something sarcastically yes well i just think i just thought why would one is that this is patronizing to everybody this assumption so yeah it's um the acorn possibly got put in the ground after the uh after the question time explosion and then it grew and then i sort of see it everywhere and also i get a lot of stories from people whose lives have been affected by these issues in very much the same ways my life is being shut down because of is it is it a pc backlash did you completely correct backlash is that what you think it is what you're what you're feeding on i think it's an attempt to um pander to the to 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 and it's is that a twitter thing do you think or is it are big companies getting sucked into that space it's it's my former alma mater rather thing um i think they've just said we're going to re-name the george bernard shaw theater because he's problematic um i'm like sure he's thrilled having given them all the profits from pygmalion to uh keep the place up and running and then they've stopped restoration comedy because that is also problematic so and i'm receiving email i mean for example i don't know who's writing these emails because i get them from radha i get them from equity i get them from bafta from the arts institutions that i was formerly part of and they all say the same thing we are a terrible bunch of racists we're awfully sorry we're going to do something about it and you're just like going this is not the radar i remember no all the radha that produced adrian lester and david harwood and all of these you know wonderful actors so my view was was that it yeah it's getting steadily worse and the more you allow this stuff to to dominate in culture the more it becomes normalized it's a self-loathing do you think amongst people that they feel you know i'm pretty privileged white you know how had a good life and you know and then you look back into history and see how awful the history was for being groups for example and they want to say sorry is that what from for some reason i think there is an element of white savior dumb about the whole thing potentially which is again really useless and also then i i'm i'm have linguistic language problems with the word bane yeah oh you lot but it's essentially it's that's sort of the way it's talking to you it's like well if you're black asian ethnic minority then you all have the same view and yeah that's totally wrong ultimately it's the most patronizing thing you can do to anybody because you know we're all different yeah all we are in martin luther king said that didn't he shuffled that one in on the content of character he shuffled in individualism while talking about race yeah we are we are all individual we are all like on life of brian we're all individual at this point and we don't want to be told um and why do you think there's this kind of collective amongst institutions i mean do you think they should be they should be renaming theaters or should they be putting a plaque in the george bernard shaw theater to explain what he wrote and why some people don't like it is that the answer i would go down that path yes um i is who was it hillary mantell who said it's not our job to tick off history it's um you know we kind of eradicate these things and also we shouldn't be judging history from our current perspective and we do have a very we have a sort of self-loathing desire to to just take the bad bits out of history and not look at the positives especially in regards to stuff like slavery and we hear a lot about slavery and wish the uk ended or helped to end which we did at the loss of many sailors lives and you know wilberforce and stuff like this that so i suppose you're not trying to engender a great sense of national pride but you're trying to reclaim a reasoned conversation so that so that our children don't leave school white privileged self-loathing children self-loathing children because we've seen how that works out when they leave university at least yes well this yeah they've become accuracy i'm so glad i didn't go to university so glad i mean there are some good universities there must be but and there's no one in politics making these points at the moment as far as you can see well no no suddenly there is i noticed over the weekend suddenly though suddenly suddenly that could be you're drawing towards your lodestar possibly well you know what i'm here to help and that's why some people have been calling it now you're going to contest this uh a cult uh culture wars ukip now what they mean by that is that you will have an effect on the con on parties to make them think about the issues you're raising it doesn't mean that you are like you keep or you are nigel farage but you still don't mean yeah absolutely i mean if you take that like that comparison or not yeah i listen i've been called a lot worse apparently recently so i don't mind um i think ukip we again in in the way that we deal with culture the minute you say the words you keep everyone goes terrible terrible you know and in softer ways they go subtle roads awful awful you know instead of it's a reflex that you're you're fed through the media so you can be very successful in campaigning for the referendum weren't they so you know as much as i don't think it's probably the best comparison i think it's fair enough you know have you ever voted before in your life i voted remain did you vote remain yeah i guess that went well then and uh did you vote any political party are you i voted late i've voted labour and conservative in my life have you yeah um i'll never ever vote labour again with kirsten power because of because of taking the knee and because of then actually verbally taking the knee and he's being sucked into so that the technique means when he was photographed in his office kneeling he's going to regret that one over feeling for black lives matter wasn't he why does that annoy particularly him kneeling um well it's what he's kneeling to that annoys me so he's kneeling a member of george floyd who was murdered in america why is that a problem him kneeling for that or do you think he's not concerned he's not sure what he's aiming for i'm not sure he knew exactly what he's kneeling for i think in a lot a lot of black lives matter is a very tricky thing isn't it because it's patently obvious that black lives matter they really really do and we all well except for the very small minority of horrible bigoted nasty racists in this country um and across the world we he was he was kneeling i suppose in solidarity with the with the belief that black lives matter but actually black nose matter is a movement and a quite pernicious one at that as far as i can tell and it's um you know i mean just the whole idea of asking someone to take the knee to you it creates in my head a very odd i don't see taking the knees in as a solid as a gesture of solidarity i see taking the knee as a gesture of subservience and so for me i think it was tricky that way and then once i started reading into black lives matter and then seeing how black lives matter is now being taken over possibly for the best intentions of it by um sort of an arctic marxist one might argue racial supremacist movement no are you sympathetic with that that that playing which buzzed around i think uh only yeah all lives matter oh i 100 think all lives matter yeah and i've had some very interesting conversations with some very smart people who say all lives matter is racist and why is it racist why do they say it's racist because um well i yes i i do ask that question and i sit there and wait for the answer and it doesn't always come i think people think that it's a provocative response to black lives matter but actually if you engage if you engage the black lives matter crowd on the i their mantra of the fact that we're all systemically racist and uh stuff like that then you've lost the war already because you're in you're apologizing for something that you are not or in the in the debate as it begins so i think all those matters is where the conversation should begin what made you choose the name reclaim for your party it sounds like a salvage yard but it means more i know i quite like the salvaged lard aspect of it i love the thought i i often reclaim things so um when i looked in the countryside i would i this you'd often find me knocking around a reclaimed yard why not hmm it's still fit for purpose of of what we used to have in this country and we've lost do you think because or it's just something that's always been there and is very useful and you don't need to go to ikea to feel to you know revive your idea i mean it's not why i chose it but every time i think of a claim often i do think of a recommendation i rather like it and of course you made your big splash on the political scene with question time and then you know you are an actor you presume you went back to your day job did it how members of whatever whatever you are doing well again this problem of um freedom of speech and uh the right to offend five years ago i i'm i'm fairly consistent in my thinking it evolves and you know stuff like that and my mum and dad were very good to teach me relatively good manners um but yes as far as uh other actors are concerned i had a very threatening phone call from one uh who i'd worked with first six months who told me which was quite odd was the fact that when he phoned me i heard him put it on loudspeaker and go shh said that i knew there was a table of people there and then he said um why because i tweeted every single human life is sacred which is a belief of mine i think shall we start there logical humane universal real positive progressive none of the shite that you throw at me and yes so he told them he told me how could i do this uh how could i say this stuff when he really loved me right so i explained to him about david dawn so i said why why are you making why is george floyd being made a martyr and then david dawn the off uh you know the retired police uh chief who went over to stop his uh friend of his shops being looted was shot in the chest and it was played out on facebook so did his black life matter essentially it's what i said to this actor and you know often when you do engage people in reason to debate about this stuff happened so yeah off he was off then i get some very funny text from actors going totally behind you mate 100 behind you and then i'll they'll text me and then two seconds later i'll see their twitter feed and they'll go although it was a very male dominated show here is uh some pictures of the great b.a.m.e and women and stuff that and you're just like okay yes adopt a position yes you know just be authentic it must be so hard pretending to be woke as well i think that must be very yourself unemployable after the remarks on question time or were you uh did it affect work i'm employed now i know yes you're on board now um as an actor i really hope that uh i won't be an employee actor one day because i really i are going to available people that say and it only takes one in a crew of 150 to say i don't feel safe on set with that racist for me to be like well find someone this work did work did work was work canceled after question time well we had covered but i've certainly been made aware i was warned several times that um unless i changed my the tune i was playing that it would have a very drastic effect on my career and then i was warned formally that it was certain to have a devastating effect on my career and the problem with doing that to someone like me is because i have a platform and because i believe very strongly in what i believe in all you're doing is empowering me so don't threatening me doesn't work it's like it's like you're almost blacklisted i mean totally yeah back to the 50th hollywood with with the communists and the rest i mean but here's the thing you look at lawrence of arabia or something i asked a film made by written by a great screen screenwriter directed by a great filmmaker these are films made by individuals with vision and they wanted to make these amazing amazing amazing dramas this doesn't happen so much anymore which is often why it's very difficult to work out what the story is in a modern film i find because you're going what's going on and there's lots of nods to things that are appropriate so i love show business i would love to be able one day to walk back onto set not grinning but strong and stoical and know that at least some of the people on there who've been quiet and saddened and you know stumped down might come up as they do every single day as i walk around london and go thank you mate that you can now have an opinion have an opinion isn't it crazy it's so wrong that we should have an opinion and then be able to share it with somebody the answer to your the concern you have about opinion just turn off twitter leave twitter because in the real world people don't really have the same cancelled culture i don't agree i'm literally every day i walk around and i'm stopped by people all day and yesterday i was stopped and it made me very emotional um by an artist who paints family portraits and he started crying you know and saying i i can't i'm so i'm literally terrified because it comes from the right place the woke world doesn't it there's people wanting to be nicer to other people it's like if they're trying to create a kind of world aren't they by writing the wrongs of 300 years ago by taking the knee about black lives matter and you know expanding or even just knocking statues down they're trying to make this country kind of that's where it's coming from to me is it or is it coming from a desire to tear it all down and start again or tear it all down just for the sake of tearing it all down which is often what revolutionaries do that i don't know you know those jacobins and stuff like that just get carried away with chopping people's heads off after a while i don't trust them i don't trust their motivation i think you can have a kevin waitley who is an old school lefty and i spent 10 years nuttering to him and i spoke to him the other day and we can we disagree on a lot of things my best friend is a socialist we have this i think woke up that's how it should be yeah yeah and one can have these reasonable conversations but woke doom is something something very different i think it's it's much more pernicious in it because it wants to it wants to i mean it's fine you can't cancel me because i'm not yeah i'm uncancelable yeah literally uncountable because i don't work okay so we're going to go back to january and you've you've made your mark um in the world of politics um works drying up but then covered happens at what point does this angry concern the concern you have about it become a party i mean when did this this idea happen well it's a series of events obviously you know my my children starting to talk about racism in totally inappropriate ways coming back from school saying i'm sorry if this is racist dad but mum's a better cook than you stuff like that you know so you're going what are you teaching my children in school um and then you know it's sort of evolution but i'd been evolving it had been evolving before i remember getting very upset about um the belief the victim stuff in terms of the kavanaugh hearings about kavanaugh hearings in america so it's a series a series series of things then i think okay movement shall i form a movement and we can go and bash on the door of the of the government and really mess with them and tell them well not mess with them that's not fair hold them to account coffee burp [Music] hold them to account and then i thought movement movement movement movement and then i look around and i see these amazing movements that are just fabulous and i go is the government to move as a result of a movement or is the government going to move at the threat of you taking a couple of their votes away from them what's more likely so then i think it's going to be done the latter what's the model for it what do you mean well what's the model for what you're doing for what um reclaim is israel you looked at movements looked at some small floor parties is there a similar party you want to base it on are you writing the entire rule book on what party looks like um i yeah i mean i'm i'm writing the rule book as far as it goes at this stage obviously as you know we were slightly rumbled a uh yes a bit early because someone was going to report that myself and nigel farage were starting party which was that's not true and it's quite clear you haven't talked about this he hasn't called you about this or has he i've met nigel fragio and you know he's made a great contribution to british politics whether you like him or not and he's very significant figure but no he's not involved in this because this is my thing he was looking at party i think called uh rip renewal or something or reform or something similar yeah that's probably why there's a confusion because he ended up looking at a new idea after the brexit party that was it exactly but in terms of um party structure i have um you know i have a sensible person who runs it from the top and then i have me and then i'm working with some other people who you'll find out at launch okay well let's ask them from nuts and bolts about the party how many members or people have got in touch since the news emerged last week's sunday telegraph so last week's sunday telegraph because again we were in a rush we had to get the domain name while we were waiting for the domain name reclaim it was called the lawrence fox party which was hell for me foreign yes the lawrence fox for prime minister party lawrence fox for this so uh about 10 000 so far yeah people i've just emailed in registered on online there'll be plenty more as well that's quite a lot better that's okay isn't it oh i mean honestly i mean you know for listeners who don't know the live demons have around 120 000 members like the tories around the same number so you're you know you're one-tenth of the way there yeah well there's a lot of people that just haven't been represented and aren't being thought about in politics are you asking them who they voted for in last election or that you care well at the moment as busy as i am i haven't gone through all 10 000 emails i've i'll leave leslie to do that and you've raised money haven't you i have apparently 5 million pounds has been pledged so was all this money presented you in a big fat envelope lawrence fox it was delivered uh in a jeep with in two very large suitcases um directly from moscow it's been money pledged then money pledged um as you know in term well i don't know if you know i now know tell me i don't know have you ever tried to start up a bank account for a political party i have not it's very interesting it's hard isn't it it's imagine not easy so you know but fortunately because we're not a political party i can operate as a movement at the moment i i'm still running operations from your current account it's a money gain to your current account we've got uh it's probably done absolutely well you're not do you think you can do this sort of thing without doing it properly no can you name any of your supporters jeremy hosking is one of them so you can confirm me and he was a former tory donor big brexit big brexit party uh big brexit supporter in the in the old days on brexit was a live currency and now it's not um how much has he pledged five five million yeah from him mm-hmm wow yeah so five million from him who cares he has so any so goodness that's well there must be other support from other people too then there's little bits and bobs coming in see more than five million now [Music] that's a lot of money so what is so if you see if my instagram account suddenly changes to me on a very nice speedboat in the caribbean yes you'll know what went wrong yes so are you targeting raising a certain amount by the end by the end of the year or something no no we've i've budgeted i've budgeted this up to the next election and um and that's enough to keep you going for the election i'd have thought i mean yeah unless i hire 30 000 people all of a sudden no i have i very carefully but i the thing is i'm i've been told i can do whatever i want to do but i must account very carefully for what i do yeah so yeah we're budgeted fully till the next election sorry guys have you got staff i have a very small staff currently how many people uh three three um and are you in touch with candidates i mean let's be honest about it the election could will happen probably in three and a half years time or so yeah but there's also elections next year aren't there in may are you standing at those elections or someone you're looking at looking at they're all we're looking at the big one for party is data how do you get past that problem of knowing where voters live who might support you that's always i'm going to mention you youtube again because i've uh covered all their by-elections going back you know a decade and they didn't know where their supporters might live and that's where the bigger parties have this decades of data of who votes for labor tories and they know how to not then get them out quickly and that's the problem you'll have in any election yes i have a that this has been raised and we are on to the data and how do you get around that problem how do i get around this or not the party how do you deal with the issue of of not knowing whether the voters who might support you live and how to get them out how does one get them out that well that's the job of data person but you might have an army an army of people don't you i suppose knocking on doors i mean where will the party be let's say in three years time will you have well i'll be prime minister of course yeah that's taking those red listeners yes yes uh the the you know the who knows where the party will be in two three years time that's impossible to tell but i i have a feeling ju genuine feeling just from walking around even in london i mean get out of london and it's beyond the people my dad went to a the old pub because he was a he stopped acting for 10 years to become a missionary and he went to the old pub up the road in sheffield when he went to see his friend and they all gave him came up to him and gave me a huge hug and a clap wow and he said thank god for your son and then that was the weekend i was closing targeting then because you can't find every seat can you let's say you fight 20 seats in the election next time why are you i don't know you tell me i'm not going to tell you you're not going to have to move which seats would you target would it be i mean conservative seats or would it be labor seats it's a broad it's a it's across the board it's not it's not a concern you have a hit list of seats where you think you might have a chance we're drawing up a lit we're drawing up a lot of lists you were nodding then lauren's fox i saw that all right um i'm asking you details you're five years into launching a party i appreciate you don't know the answer yeah when you look in the mirror in the morning you're shaving or you haven't shaved today but if you were shaving you were what makes you think there looks back at me an mp i'm always asking some mps what makes them think what raises them above the mass of other people and think it's i can do i can i can be prime minister i can be uh an mp what makes you think that about you um in this situation it's a sense of duty i feel like i feel duty bound to do it i feel due to bound to do it for my children i feel duty bound to do it for those whose voices have just not been listened to at all by a conservative government with an atc majority you know and you had boris the telegraph columnist now you've got boris politician and it's like can someone do something please we're all getting very upset because if he were a columnist now he would be demanding to know why the tory government is locking up students in manchester so i'm demanding to know i will be demanding to know myself from him yeah when can we see a list of policies you've got a blue folder with you which you won't let me look into my blue folder no what's in the blue lawrence nobody looks in the blue folder but me um yes we're working on obviously we will you'll get policies at launch now when are you launching we're gonna we're aiming to launch in november in november apparently the electoral commission can be can also be quite tricky i've heard yes well they can be with the name can't they they might think the name isn't are you worried the name is safe you think to get through well i hope so i think i think it's it's uh it's pretty obvious what it's trying to do reclaim reason reform progress four verbs active verbs in terms of of you and your family i mean how are they reacting to this you're the son of james fox famous actor um you know a lot you know your family members in acting how are they all reacting to what you've done um with minorly sweaty brows i suppose a few of them but my dad who is an absolute hero of mine and my mum who was we lost to this year but is an absolute hero of mine as well um my dad and i walk every day round the park and we discuss for an hour and we discuss that the ins and outs of the of of where we're going so dad is a dad is a fan he's gonna vote for his son i hope so you lost your mom i'm sorry to hear this this year and that explains the tattoos on your on your hands which say freedom space her favorite they were her favorite words were they yeah and i and i think it revolves around the freedom to speak and the space to think and so whilst it has nothing to do with what i'm doing i suppose it does in the fact that she's living with me still in my mind that um that's what i demand that people have um because that is how we're going to actually progress are you amazed to find yourself here a year ago goodness you know uh october last year it was full of brexit and parliament being parodied and everything else happening and were you filming louis you're from the film finish filming louis october last year i was sat on the roof terrace in majorca with um hair extensions in doing a monk accident playing a um playing a buddhist uh drug dealing guru yeah he said it's been it's been an interesting few months i mean yeah are you are you surprised i mean i i guess did you mean to burst onto the scene and go on question time i mean i just why were you booked for that program do you know why that happened because i'd written this song called the distance which was complaining about was not complaining it was making a point that we're all going to hell in a handcart if we continue this censoriousness and this horribleness you know real world effects on people and there are actually very serious things that are taking place in life you know and this is not one of them but it seems to be taking over the public discourse so no i just said what i felt uh then uh was descended on by the by the quite well organized little woke mob who decided that they would shut me up for good and i said um no no no this is we must be able to speak freely everybody must be able to be able to tell their own story they must be able to and you you also must risk offending people i've got to ask you the question they'll be asking me or that my twitter feed was saying are you racist laurence fox no but i can't prove it it's like being it's like being in a madness i'm not insane but this is this is the language this is the problem of the of the of where they want to play you they want to play you on a field that we're all systemically racist which is absolutely categorically not true and is so anti-progress deeply regressive and divides society i'm going to split people up we're talking about segregating at universities the americans got it right though which i know i was talking about that well they're talking certainly in america about uh segregating dorms having black only dorms in university that'll be coming why is that why is that happening because they're threatened by our white supremacy you know but we're just because your people are white that threatens black people is the idea because the white white people are systemically racist you know it's crazy but what the americans have done very cleverly which i rather appreciated was at princeton they said well as they released a statement saying how systemically racist they were and how much they wanted to apologize the government said we better withdraw funding from you because we don't like funding racists so i have a feeling this thing will come and bite them in the bum when you saw kierstarma saying he had unconscious bias training this week what did you think i thought you're never ever going to get into power ever that's what i thought and then that on top of the fact that he was sitting there going the problem with unconscious bias training to start with have you done it yet no and i never will and i would encourage everyone to never do it because it's part of critical race theory which is a dangerous and vicious ideology uh the problem with with their unconscious bias training is that it never produces the same result twice so therefore it's a fairly pointless piece of pseudoscience and it's ghost hunting as they say you know you're trying to find racism in someone but kirsten stood up and he's using all of this language in the way that he speaks uh about structural inequality being a racist thing as well and that once you're into the language of critical race theory which he is and you're steeply you're telling an 80 majority white country not that that makes any difference that they're all a bunch of racists and i have a feeling there will obviously be people that take him in his best work but i have a feeling those people will turn around and go i don't want you who's there to represent me telling me that i'm disgusting and that was the mistake that jeremy corbyn made with labour wasn't it by almost never he said it but the idea from the party was that people who voted for brexit in northern towns were somehow racist and which has always been a contention we would never accept on this podcast for example no it's not it's absolutely not right they just have a difference of opinion in one tweet laurence fox how would you describe your new political party oh good question in one tweet how would i describe my political party giving you a home lawrence fox many thanks for joining us on this week's chopper politics thank you thanks chopper it's my politics by the way you've been fired it's my show people no you've been fired

Channel: The Telegraph

Views: 186,734

Rating: 4.6945252 out of 5

Keywords: Telegraph, News, laurence fox, politics, uk politics, brexit, woke, wokeness, conservative, labour, george floyd, question time, reclaim, choppers politics, christopher hope, podcast

Id: 6m8KInOorFE

Length: 34min 43sec (2083 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 02 2020