Laurence Fox has lost his ‘good name’: what now
for the sad clown of the culture wars circus?
Marina Hyde
A high court ruling marks the climax of Fox’s comic
unravelling. Now let’s focus on the figures who pull his strings
Tue 30 Jan
2024 15.14 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/30/laurence-fox-culture-wars-high-court
Did some
randos calling him a “racist” on the platform formerly known as Twitter cost
Laurence Fox his acting career? No, suggests a judgment from the high court,
where a judge also found the actor turned thought leader to have defamed said
randos by calling them “paedophiles”. You can’t just call any old person a
paedophile, apparently – unless you’re the owner of Twitter/X, of course, and
you get sued in the US as opposed to the UK, like Elon Musk did by that Thai
cave rescue diver a few years back. Appearing on the steps outside a Los
Angeles courtroom following his favourable verdict, Musk declared: “My faith in
humanity is restored”. These were not the words of Laurence Fox yesterday.
Instead,
the Reclaim party leader and Hunter Biden biopic star offered a nine-minute
monologue outside the high court that had a distinctly “after lunch” feel to
it. “What we’ve got, after several million quid, is a nothing burger,”
elucidated Fox. Laurence was wearing glasses with transition lenses, which –
and like him, I’m just making a rhetorical point here – always look like a
come-and-get-me plea to the beast wing at HMP Full Sutton. He was accompanied
by his girlfriend, Liz Barker. Liz believes the moon landings were faked, and
has previously stated she doesn’t buy the whole theory of human evolution from
apes. (“No. I think we come from another race.”)
A supposed
free-speech nut suing for libel (not his first rodeo), Laurence brought his
counterclaim on the basis that “I felt that one of the most important things I
had in this world was my good name”. Mm-hm. I can’t help feeling that that ship
had not just already sailed, but been sunk in the Solent around 300 years
before the development of the electric lightbulb. If suitable donors emerge –
more on that later – Laurence’s good name might one day be raised off the ocean
floor, dragged in fragments to Portsmouth, and painstakingly restored as a time
capsule of early 21st-century absurdity. Do recall this entire case began with
a supermarket tweeting about Black History Month.
Nevertheless,
the trial itself arguably added to the gaiety of the nation, as Laurence
discoursed on the discourse, and claimed to have been offered a role in The
Batman before his career was derailed. That remains unverified, though I can
definitely see him playing one of the guys who kill Bruce Wayne’s parents. As
for Fox’s claim that he had been approached for a part in Succession … Clearly,
it’s a huge honour for a show like Succession to find itself woven into
Laurence’s spellbinding “before” story. Even so, it must be said the idea he
was up for a part in it was certainly eye-catching news, most particularly to
those behind Succession. No one had any memory of such a thing. Was it remotely
possible that at some point he had appeared on a British casting assistant’s
longlist? It’d have to have been a very long list, seems to be the polite
answer. “We definitely talked about him a lot in the writers’ room,” one writer
reflects. “Just not in connection with a part …”
Yet despite
all his humiliations and defeats, Laurence Fox’s essential ridiculousness and
poignantly insatiable need for attention confine him to the comic spectrum as
opposed to the tragic. He is more of a Malvolio than a Macbeth. Shortly after
his fateful appearance on Question Time, Laurence boasted to the Sunday Times
of having been the only person to have turned up for an appearance on QT “with
guitars and shit”. Even now, I am unable to type that without laughing.
Everything
he has done since that moment feels like a pose – a way for a middling
supporting actor to get four-time-Oscar-winner attention. There’s a reason
toddler psychologists call behaviour like this “acting out”. The second
Laurence feels he’d get more attention/cash for the apology tour or exposé of
the hard right, you might expect him to execute a 180 and release at least two
bluegrass albums about his journey. Working titles: Redemption Creek and
Question Time?
Speaking of
questions, however, let us turn to the received wisdom that Fox is permanently
broke. In fact, some interested parties profess surprise at the implication
that he struggles financially after the drying up of acting offers, when in
fact Laurence benefits from huge sums of money every year courtesy of Jeremy
Hosking. Having been the third-biggest Brexit donor, Hosking is the mega-rich
investor who funds Reclaim, and has given it millions, apparently indifferent
to the fact he has barely a vote to show for it. Hosking’s Brexit crusade has
pivoted to the culture wars and anti-net zero agenda. To give you a sense of
just how deep his pockets are, the MP Andrew Bridgen was last year belatedly
forced to declare that Hosking had stumped up £4,470,576.42 in interest-free
loans to fund a doomed legal action against Bridgen’s brother for control of
the family potato farm. Bridgen was relieved of the Tory whip for comparing the
Covid vaccine to the Holocaust, then briefly joined Reclaim, but is now back as
an independent. Hosking is still donating to his campaign to retain his seat.
Whatever is
going on here, it seems pretty clear that Laurence Fox is just one of the idiot
faces of it. Who is this backroom man, lavishly funding one dickhead’s extended
breakdown as part of a campaign to buy his way to political and cultural
influence, at the same time as bleating publicly about the state of our
democracy? Why should Hosking prefer to lead from behind while his paid fool or
fools create busywork or diversions? The last recorded accounts for the Reclaim
party cover the period until November 2021. Their up-to-date figures are long
overdue – as, perhaps, is our focus on the organ grinder rather than the
monkey.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
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