Darren Grimes | |
|---|---|
 Grimes in 2021 | |
| Born | 22 July 1993 Consett, County Durham, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Education | Tanfield School |
| Occupation(s) | Digital manager, political activist |
Darren Grimes (born 22 July 1993 [1] ) is a British right-wing [2] political commentator and activist. A Liberal Democrat activist before dropping out of university, he then worked for a number of Brexit campaigns. He set up the website Reasoned in May 2020.
Grimes grew up in a single-parent household in Consett, County Durham, England. [3] He is openly gay. [4] He studied fashion and business studies at the University of Brighton but did not complete his degree. [5]
While at university, Grimes was an activist for the Liberal Democrats, and worked for then-MP Norman Lamb's unsuccessful 2015 party leadership campaign. [6] In summer 2015 he was interviewed by the BBC about his admiration for former Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy, praising Kennedy's vocal pro-EU stance and saying it could have helped the Remain side in the forthcoming referendum: "He believed that in an increasingly globalised world, having Britain in Europe was the only way forward. And I think that's the message the party needs pushing." [7]
However, by the following year Grimes' political stance had changed and he founded the pro-Brexit group BeLeave aimed at younger voters during the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum campaign. [8]
Grimes later dropped out of university, and between 2016 and 2018, he worked as a deputy editor for the political website BrexitCentral, founded by Matthew Elliott, the former Vote Leave chief executive. [9] In 2018, he became the digital manager for the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a free market think tank. [10]
In 2019, he was amongst those associated with a newly launched right-wing youth organisation called Turning Point UK (TPUK), set up by Conservative Party donor and unsuccessful Brexit Party MEP candidate George Farmer. [11] It is closely allied to Turning Point USA, a pro-Trump youth movement. [12]
In May 2020 Grimes launched Reasoned, a website aimed at those "standing against the tide" who "hide [their] political views for fear of being called homophobic, a TERF, [or] racist". [13] It is a rebranding of a previous conservative youth group called Reason, and is backed by the son of former Brexit Party MEP Lance Forman. According to the satirical magazine Private Eye , a video was released in 2020 by Grimes on Reasoned that appeared to be a near word-for-word copy of a video released by the US right-wing platform PragerU. [14] Facebook adverts for the group placed in 2018 were paid for by "Your Channel Media", a company owned and run by TPUK chief executive Oliver Anisfeld. [15] [ better source needed ]
In July 2020, an interview with the historian David Starkey that Grimes published on his video platform sparked controversy. The historian remarked that "Slavery was not genocide, otherwise there wouldn't be so many damn blacks in Africa or in Britain, would there?" [16] This prompted criticism, including condemnation by former Chancellor of the Exchequer Sajid Javid, and Grimes tweeted that "I reject in the strongest possible terms what Dr Starkey said in that clip and so very wish I'd caught it at the time." [16] The Metropolitan Police opened an investigation into Grimes on the suspicion of stirring up racial hatred, and requested to interview Grimes. The former director of public prosecutions Ken Macdonald called the investigation "deeply threatening of free speech", [17] a view which was echoed by some Conservative Party MPs. [18] The investigation concluded without any charges being brought. [19]
In July 2021, Grimes sent a tweet to Marcus Rashford following the England football team's defeat in the Euro 2020 Final at which Rashford missed a penalty kick. Grimes tweeted: "Honestly though @MarcusRashford, penalties not politics from now on, aye?", referring to Rashford's successful lobbying to extend the provision of free school meals. [20] Grimes' comment was criticised by various people on social media as insensitive. [20]
In 2018, Grimes was fined £20,000 by the Electoral Commission after it determined that there was evidence that BeLeave had spent more than £675,000 with the Canadian political consultancy firm AggregateIQ in coordination with the official Brexit campaign organisation Vote Leave in distribution targeted social media advertisements. [21] The Commission argued that these actions violated electoral spending rules, and that both Grimes and Vote Leave official David Alan Halsall had made false declarations relating to the spending. Grimes appealed, claiming that his misstatements were unintentional. He won the appeal and his fine was overturned; [22] Vote Leave, however, withdrew its appeal and paid fines totalling £61,000. [23] Subsequently, in May 2020, the Metropolitan Police ended its investigation into Grimes and Halsall. [24] In June 2021, the Chairman of the Electoral Commission apologised to Grimes in a Sunday Telegraph interview. [25]
In January 2022, Grimes began presenting his own weekend show on GB News called Real Britain. [26] He left the show in November 2022. [27]
In April 2023 he returned to GB News, co-hosting a Saturday night show and as a stand-in for several presenters, including Neil Oliver.[ citation needed ]
In October 2023, Byline Times published allegations against Grimes relating to “persistent sexual harassment of a junior straight male colleague” while working at GB News. While the complainant was said to be offered a role elsewhere at the channel in response, a source told the outlet that the channel’s safeguarding processes “amounted to letting them know by text when Grimes was due to be in the studio, so he could avoid him.” Fellow host Dan Wootton, who has since departed from GB News following his involvement in the Laurence Fox GB News Scandal and was investigated by the Metropolitan Police in relation to sexual misconduct of his own, [28] is said to have advocated for Grimes in a subsequent misconduct hearing. [29]
David Robert Starkey is an English historian, radio and television presenter, with views that he describes as conservative. The only child of Quaker parents, he attended Kendal Grammar School before reading history at Cambridge on a scholarship. There he specialised in Tudor history, writing a thesis on King Henry VIII's household. From Cambridge, he moved to the London School of Economics, where he was a lecturer in history until 1998. He has written several books on the Tudors.
Nigel Paul Farage is a British broadcaster and former politician who was Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) from 2006 to 2009 and 2010 to 2016 and Leader of the Brexit Party from 2019 to 2021. Farage is currently the Honorary President of Reform UK and a presenter for GB News. He served as Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for South East England from 1999 until the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union in 2020.
Laurence Paul Fox is an English actor, broadcaster, musician, and political activist. A member of the British entertainment industry's Fox family, he graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and debuted in the film The Hole (2001). His best known role is James Hathaway in the TV drama series Lewis (2006–2015). He has also released a studio album titled Holding Patterns (2016).
Laura Juliet Kuenssberg is a British journalist who presents the BBC's flagship Sunday morning politics show.
Daniel John William Wootton is a New Zealand and British journalist and broadcaster.
On 23 June 2016, a referendum, commonly referred to as the EU referendum or the Brexit referendum, took place in the United Kingdom (UK) and Gibraltar to ask the electorate whether the country should remain a member of, or leave, the European Union (EU). The referendum resulted in 51.9% of the votes cast being in favour of leaving the EU, triggering calls to begin the process of the country's withdrawal from the EU commonly termed "Brexit".
Arron Fraser Andrew Banks is a British businessman and political donor. He is the co-founder of the Leave.EU campaign. Banks was previously one of the largest donors to the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and helped Nigel Farage's campaign for Britain to leave the EU.
Vote Leave was a campaigning organisation that supported a "Leave" vote in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. On 13 April 2016 it was designated by the Electoral Commission as the official campaign in favour of leaving the European Union in the Referendum.
Russian interference in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum is a debated subject and remains unproven, though multiple sources argue evidence exists demonstrating that the Russian government attempted to influence British public opinion in favour of leaving the European Union. Investigations into this subject have been undertaken by the UK Electoral Commission, the UK Parliament's Culture Select Committee and Intelligence and Security Committee, and the United States Senate. "The Russia Report" published by the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament in July 2020 did not specifically address the Brexit campaign, but it concluded that Russian interference in UK politics is commonplace. It also found substantial evidence that there had been interference in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.
BeLeave was a campaign group which campaigned for the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union in the 2016 EU referendum. The group was set up to focus on younger voters.
Steven Bray is a British activist from Port Talbot in South Wales who, in 2018 and 2019, made daily protests against Brexit in College Green, Westminster. He is variously known as Stop Brexit Man, Mr Stop Brexit or the Stop Brexit guy.
Led By Donkeys is a British political campaign group, established in December 2018 as an anti-Brexit group, but which has also criticised other actions of the Conservative government. Since the group's creation its four founders have been calling out what they call "thermonuclear hypocrisy" and used satire targeted at pro-Brexit politicians. Led By Donkeys' main campaign consists of billboards containing past tweets by pro-Brexit politicians, or quotes presented as tweets. These tweets state the politicians' previous political positions, which according to the group have not stood the test of time.
Several allegations of unlawful campaigning in the 2016 EU referendum have been made. Some allegations were dismissed by the investigating bodies, but in other cases wrongdoing was established, leading to the imposition of penalties. Sanctions have included the levying of the maximum fine possible on Facebook for breaches of data privacy.
Alexandra Lesley Phillips is a British journalist and former politician. She served as a Brexit Party member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the South East England constituency from 2019 to 2020. She was the second candidate on the party's list for the constituency after party leader Nigel Farage. Phillips was previously head of media at the UK Independence Party (UKIP), which she left in September 2016. She was a GB News presenter between June 2021 and September 2022. In February 2023, Phillips joined Reform UK.
Thomas Hedley Fairfax Harwood is a British journalist, political commentator and television show host. He became the deputy political editor of GB News in March 2023. Harwood previously worked as a reporter for the right-wing political news website Guido Fawkes between 2018 and 2021, and was a regular contributor to The Daily Telegraph, writing online columns from 2019 to 2021.
GB News is a British free-to-air, opinion-orientated news television and radio channel. The channel is available on Freeview, Freesat, Sky, YouView, Virgin Media and via the internet on Samsung TV Plus and YouTube. An audio simulcast of the station is also available on DAB+ radio.
Byline Times is a British newspaper and website founded in March 2019 by Peter Jukes and Stephen Colegrave, who are also its executive editors. It is a development of Byline, a crowdfunding and media outlet platform founded in April 2015 by Seung-yoon Lee and Daniel Tudor.
BrexitCentral was a pro-Brexit news website founded by Matthew Eliott. It was active from 2016-2020.
Calvin John Robinson is a British Old Catholic cleric, conservative political commentator, writer and broadcaster. Since 2023, he has been a priest in the Nordic Catholic Church, an Old Catholic denomination of high church Lutheran patrimony; from 2022 until his priestly ordination, he had been a deacon in the Free Church of England, a conservative Anglican realignment denomination.
This is a timeline of the history of GB News, a free-to-air television and radio news channel in the United Kingdom.