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The Londoner: ‘Cultural warrior’ Laurence Fox riles workers over party name

BBC
BBC

Laurence Fox’s planned political party already faces its first hurdle — a skirmish over the name Reclaim.

“We’ll be arguing strongly to the Electoral Commission that when it comes to ‘RECLAIM’, working-class people were here first,” Roger Harding of the Manchester-based Reclaim project says.

Fox, an actor who has become a popular figure on the Right for his stand against “woke” culture, announced yesterday that he was forming a political party to “fight the culture wars” and “reclaim” British values. He says he has already received £5 million in donations.

But the Reclaim project, a charity founded in 2010 which supports young working-class people, said they got to the name first.

Harding, the charity’s CEO, told us today: “I started getting texts on Sunday morning about it. It was surreal, really, it’s not something you really usually contend with.”

He added that the charity had been overwhelmed by support, including some from people with “experience around protecting names”. He claimed that were Fox to go ahead with the planned name, it would be “a major blow to us to be regularly confused with a party fighting a culture war”.

A spokesman for Fox told The Londoner: “Like reclaim the charity, Laurence believes class should be no barrier to achievement. But it is difficult to claim sole ownership of such a universal word and concept as Reclaim”.

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(David Hartley/REX)
(David Hartley/REX)

ONE-TIME literary enfant terrible Martin Amis has admitted to sexism in his first novels. “My very early work is mired in stereotypes and views about women that I would now disown,” he told Radio 4 yesterday. Spiky Amis’s 1989 London Fields was allegedly blocked from the Booker Prize shortlist over sexism. Amis repentant? The world really is changing.

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(Colin Paterson)
(Colin Paterson)

Is this the first live viral wedding? BBC Entertainment Correspondent Colin Paterson married writer Louise Blyth on Saturday, with a stream of the service for friends, particularly Blyth's shielding grandmother.

Waiting for his bride at the altar, Paterson shared a link online, and the service has now had 10,000 views, and congratulations from Ant and Dec. “People we don’t know watching has really added to the excitement of it,” he tells us.

"It has made it really special. We knew that so many people we wanted to be there, were not allowed to be. Because of Corona Virus people have really embraced virtual connection and are on the look out for happy stories. It's really extended the wedding to another day.

The couple had moved their wedding forward to make sure they could have 30 guests, including Louise's two sons. They ended up with many more.

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(Andy Paradise)
(Andy Paradise)

Singer Beverley Knight, who is campaigning for the return of theatres, has a method to avoid the corona gloom. “I’ll look at animal rescue things. An elephant stuck in the mud,” she tells Weekend Magazine. “My favourite thing is dog rescues.” Knight advises anyone feeling down: “Seek those things out. They promote a wonderful well feeling.” We are on board.

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SW1A

(PA Archive/PA Images)
(PA Archive/PA Images)

Tim Loughton MP boasts, “I was one of the first to sign the Brady amendment,” referring to Tory Sir Graham Brady’s measure to give Parliament a say over new Covid restrictions. Sounds like Loughton is a Brady amendment hipster – he liked it before it was cool.

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CHRIS Williamson, thrown out as a Labour MP in an anti-Semitism row, paraphrases the Bard online, declaring “our task is to bury Labour, not to praise it.” Chris: they don’t even think about you at all.