Controversial actor launches political party to ‘fight the culture wars’

Entertainment

Actor Laurence Fox has launched a new political party he says is aimed at the “reclamation” of British values.

The former star of Lewis and member of the Fox acting dynasty said he had been given £5 million to get it up and running.

Fox, 42, told The Sunday Telegraph that the group, provisionally named Reclaim, would “fight the culture wars” and that he intended to stand candidates at the next general election.

In a statement announcing the launch on Twitter, he said his party would “change everything… with love, reason and understanding”.

Politicians, he wrote, had “lost touch” with people and “public institutions now work to an agenda beyond their main purpose”.

“Our modern United Kingdom was borne out of the respectful inclusion of so many individual voices,” he said.

“It is steeped in the innate values of families and communities, diverse in the truest sense but united in the want and need to call this island home.

More from Laurence Fox

“The people of the United Kingdom are tired of being told that we represent the very thing we have, in history, stood together against.”

Fox, who has been a fierce critic of the BBC, sparked controversy when he said suggestions of “racism” over how the Duchess of Sussex was treated in some quarters was “boring”.

He also hit out at black and working class actors who he claimed only expressed concerns about the industry once they had “five million quid in the bank”.

Fox, the ex-husband of actress Billie Piper, had raised large sums from ex-Tory donors and the party name is subject to approval by the Electoral Commission, the paper said.

The actor said he wanted “to preserve and celebrate our shared national history” and reform publicly funded institutions, from media to education, so they are “free from political bias”.

His post provoked mixed responses on Twitter, with one user predicting “millions of voters” would back his party and another suggesting he had chosen “the British way” of promoting change.

Others were less welcoming. One commentator called the plan the latest in “a long list of failed right wing experiments”, while another described him as a “singularly inept political illiterate seeking to fan flames of hate/racism/bigotry”.

Fox is the son of actor James Fox and part of the Fox acting dynasty along with his brother, Jack, and cousins, Emilia and Freddie.

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