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Darren Grimes

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Darren Grimes
Self portrait in Jerusalem, 2019
Born (1993-07-22) 22 July 1993 (age 31)
Consett, County Durham, England
NationalityBritish
Occupation(s)Digital manager, Political activist

Darren Grimes (born 22 July 1993[1]) is a British conservative 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 internet platform Reasoned in May 2020.

Early life

Grimes grew up in a single-parent household in Consett, County Durham, England.[2] He is openly gay.[3] He studied fashion and business studies at the University of Brighton.[4]

Activism

While at university, Grimes was an activist for the Liberal Democrats, and worked for then-MP Norman Lamb's unsuccessful 2015 party leadership campaign.[5] The following year he founded the pro-Brexit group BeLeave aimed at younger voters during the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum campaign.[6]

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.[7] In 2018, he became the digital manager for the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a free market think tank.[8]

In 2019, together with commentators Steven Edginton, Chloe Westley, Dominique Samuels, Tom Harwood and others, he was amongst those associated with a newly launched right-wing youth organisation called Turning Point UK (TPUK).[9] The organisation was set-up by Conservative donor and unsuccessful MEP candidate for the Brexit Party George Farmer, but the organisation refused to disclose its other donors.[10][11] The project was endorsed by Priti Patel, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nigel Farage, among others.[12] It is closely allied to Turning Point USA, a pro-Trump youth movement.[13] TPUK caused controversy when it encouraged students to video any left-wing bias of university lecturers.[14]

In May 2020 he launched Reasoned, an internet platform for those "standing against the tide" who "hide [their] political views for fear of being called homophobic, a TERF, [or] racist".[15] It is a rebranding of a previous Conservative youth group, also called Reason, and the satire magazine Private Eye revealed that the platform is produced by the son of former Brexit Party MEP Lance Forman. A video has also been released by Grimes on Reasoned that appears to be a near word-for-word copy of a video released by the US right-wing platform PragerU,[16] and Facebook ads for the group placed in 2018 were paid for by "Your Channel Media", a company owned and run by TPUK chief executive Oliver Anisfeld.[17]

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?"[18] 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."[18] The Metropolitan Police opened an investigation into Grimes on the suspicion of stirring up racial hatred; Grimes was asked to attend the police station to be interviewed under caution. Grimes responded in a statement saying "I cannot imagine a more contemptible way for the Metropolitan Police to abuse taxpayers' money and the trust of citizens than by investigating this vexatious claim."[19] The former director of public prosecutions Ken Macdonald called the investigation "deeply threatening of free speech",[20] a view which was echoed by Conservative party MPs.[21] The investigation was subsequently dropped on the grounds that it was not proportionate.[22]

Electoral Commission case

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.[23] The Commission argued that these actions violated electoral spending rules, and that Grimes and Vote Leave official David Alan Halsall had made false declarations relating to the spending. Vote Leave's fine was upheld on appeal, but Grimes' was overturned.[24] Subsequently, in May 2020, the Metropolitan Police ended its investigation into Grimes and Halsall.[25]

See also

References

  1. ^ @darrengrimes_ (22 July 2018). "Guys, I'm 25 now*. RIP me" (Tweet). Retrieved 12 January 2020 – via Twitter.
  2. ^ "#InMyShoes: Darren Grimes – Killing Aspiration". BBC News. 30 March 2015. Retrieved 30 December 2019.
  3. ^ Birnbaum, Sarah (29 March 2017). "This young, LGBT advocate isn't your average Brexiteer". Public Radio International. Retrieved 30 December 2019.
  4. ^ McKinney, CJ (14 February 2019). "Brexit-backing former Brighton Uni fashion student raises £77,000 in fight against 'top lawyers in the land'". Legal Cheek. Retrieved 30 December 2019.
  5. ^ Waterson, Jim (17 July 2018). "Darren Grimes: the pro-Brexit student activist fined £20k". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 December 2019.
  6. ^ "Vote Leave: Activist to give MPs evidence of 'rule breaking'". BBC News. 26 March 2018. Retrieved 31 December 2019.
  7. ^ "Matthew Elliott: Welcome to BrexitCentral". BrexitCentral. 11 September 2016. Retrieved 30 December 2019.
  8. ^ "Institute of Economic Affairs appoints new Digital Manager, Darren Grimes" (Press release). Institute of Economic Affairs. 5 June 2018. Retrieved 30 December 2019.
  9. ^ Myers, Fraser (15 March 2019). "Turning Point: 'owning' the libs won't save free speech". Spiked Magazine. Retrieved 22 July 2020.
  10. ^ Main, Ed (9 February 2019). "The battle over Britain's newest student movement". BBC News. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
  11. ^ Fazackerley, Anna (10 March 2020). "'McCarthyism' in the UK: why academics fear shaming for leftwing views". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
  12. ^ "Everything You Need To Know About The Launch of Turning Point UK". HOPE not hate. 5 February 2019. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
  13. ^ Di Stefano, Mark; Spence, Alex. "Days After Its Disastrous British Launch, Turning Point Has Already Lost One Of Its Star Recruits". BuzzFeed. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
  14. ^ "Right-wing student group Turning Point UK accused of 'McCarthyism'". inews.co.uk. 2 March 2020. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
  15. ^ "Darren Grimes, a gay man, wants 'homophobes' to 'come out of the closet' and join his new website. Yes, he actually said this". PinkNews. 29 May 2020. Retrieved 3 July 2020.
  16. ^ "What a true BeLeaver did next". Private Eye (1523). London. 5 June 2020. Archived from the original on 14 June 2020.
  17. ^ "'New' Tory youth movement is failed think-tank project". The Red Roar. 27 May 2020. Retrieved 10 December 2020.
  18. ^ a b "David Starkey criticised over slavery comments". BBC News. 3 July 2020. Retrieved 23 November 2020.
  19. ^ Dixon, Hayley (9 October 2020). "Darren Grimes under police investigation after David Starkey interview". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 9 October 2020.
  20. ^ Hamilton, Fiona. "Prosecutor criticises 'sinister' Met for investigating Darren Grimes over interview". The Times. Retrieved 13 October 2020.
  21. ^ Dixon, Hayley (11 October 2020). "Dame Cressida Dick facing questions over 'politically motivated' investigation into Darren Grimes". The Telegraph. Retrieved 13 October 2020.
  22. ^ Dixon, Hayley (21 October 2020). "Met Police drop 'race hate' investigation into Darren Grimes and David Starkey". The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group Ltd. Retrieved 27 October 2020.
  23. ^ "Brexit campaigner Darren Grimes raising funds to appeal against fine". BBC News. 25 July 2018.
  24. ^ "Investigation: Vote Leave Ltd, Mr Darren Grimes, BeLeave and Veterans for Britain". Electoral Commission. 14 August 2019. Retrieved 31 December 2019.
  25. ^ "Met Police end probe into pro-Brexit campaigners". BBC News. 8 May 2020. Retrieved 8 May 2020.
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