Right-wing activist Laurence Fox loses election deposit, again – after getting just 0.005% of votes
Laurence Fox. (Getty)
Right-wing “anti-woke” campaigner Laurence Fox has lost his £5,000 deposit after failing to secure a decent number of votes in his bid to become a London Assembly member.
Fox, who was barred from standing in the London mayoral election because his team submitted “invalid” nomination forms, secured just 0.005 per cent of votes of the 2,493,805 votes cast for the London-wide assembly members.
As reported by The Standard, the 13,795 votes fell way below the threshold required (2.5 per cent of the total number of valid votes cast) to have his deposit returned.
This isn’t the first time this has happened. In 2023, Laurence Fox lost his deposit after his disastrous election bid in Uxbridge culminated with him winning just 714 votes.
Since his loss, Fox, the leader of the right-wing Reclaim Party, which claims to stand for for “patriotism” and “protecting our borders”, has been criticised for saying he’s going to leave London after Sadiq Khan was victorious in securing a historic third term as London’s Mayor.
In an X/Twitter post on Saturday (4 May) he made a false claim about the number of mayors in the UK who are Muslim. Fox stated that the mayors of Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds and Rochdale are Muslim when that is not in fact the case. Fox’s tweet was hit with a community note, fact-checking and correcting his claims.
Khan, who was first elected in 2016, is the first Muslim mayor of London.
Under Fox’s tweet, people have hit out at him for his “childish and irresponsible post”.
Someone wrote: “This guy is genuinely repugnant! The things he tweets are reprehensible!”
The day after the fact-checked post, Fox tweeted: “This is our home. We have nowhere else to go. We don’t want sharia. We don’t want blasphemy laws. We don’t want our women covered,” as well as trotting out the very tired, often mocked old anti-immigration line… “we want our country back.”
In 2021, Fox stood as a candidate for Mayor of London but was eliminated after the first round of voting, receiving 47,634 first-preference votes – only 1.9 per cent of the overall vote.
And yes, in case you’re wondering, that does mean he lost his deposit that time as well – £10,000 in total. In his Mayor of London campaign he pledged to “fight against extreme political correctness” and “end the Met’s obsession with diversity and inclusivity”. He was endorsed by Reform UK and Nigel Farage, but finished in sixth place, behind YouTuber Niko Omilana.
Fox is also known for appearing on GB News, before being suspended, then sacked, for making misogynistic remarks on air.
In January, he lost a libel case, after calling drag queen Crystal and former Stonewall trustee Simon Blake paedophiles.
Crystal said the money she was awarded will be given to charity, adding: “maybe I’ll buy a bidet with a Fox head on it and I can think of Laurence Fox at a certain time everyday”.
Laurence Fox has also compared the LGBTQ+ progress Pride flag to the Nazi swastika and filmed himself burning Pride flags.
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