Laurence Fox announces he is leaving London

Londoner’s Diary

Farewell to Laurence Fox, the disgraced actor and aspiring politician, who appears to have kept to his word and left London.

Fox, who runs the Reclaim party and once appeared in ITV detective drama Lewis and other programmes, vowed to flee the capital after Mayor Sadiq Khan was re-elected for a historic third term. “I cannot wait to get out of this once great city, now godforsaken,” he wrote on X.

Fox, who also announced his engagement to podcaster Liz Barker, had planned to run for City Hall this year but didn’t file his nomination papers on time. He now claims he has completed the purchase of a house “back home in England” and looks forward to “miles and miles of this green and pleasant land” after years of living “overseas”.

Not so sunny California

While Rishi Sunak has rejected claims he will flee to California if he loses the election, some of his opponents continue to jibe about his other life on the West Coast. He has a property in Santa Monica, or “Silicon Beach”, near where he studied and met his wife, Akshata Murty. The family went on holiday there last year.

But even if he did decide to do a Prince Harry, would he be welcome after his stint as PM so far? In financial news outlets devoured by the California tech bros, Sunak has acquired a pretty bad rep — The Economist recently withered: “Mr Sunak’s career demonstrates a weakness for ideas that are at best gimmicks and at worst boneheaded.”

Plus among the locals there is a large community of British expats. When Politico asked a few of them this week for their reactions to a possible Sunak return, responses included: “I don’t think he’d be welcomed particularly warmly here”, “he’s just disappointed me”, “I think he’d be a bit of a target” and “I don’t think many people here would buy him a pint”. Oh dear.