Darren Grimes

Darren Grimes (born 22 July 1993[1]) is a British conservative political commentator and activist.

Darren Grimes
Born (1993-07-22) 22 July 1993
Consett, County Durham, England
NationalityBritish
OccupationDigital manager, Political activist

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 right-wing think tank.[8]

In 2019, together with commentators Steven Edgington, 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 Tory-party 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 - among others - Priti Patel, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nigel Farage.[12] It is closely allied to Turning Point USA, a controversial pro-Trump youth movement.[13] TPUK caused controversy when it encouraged students to video any "perceived left-wing bias" of university lecturers.[14]

In May 2020, he launched ReasonedUK, a platform for those "standing against the tide" who "hide [their] political views for fear of being called homophobic, a TERF, [or] racist". Some criticised perceived transphobia voiced by Grimes during the launch.[15] The magazine Private Eye revealed that the platform ReasonedUK is produced by the son of former Brexit Party MEP Lance Forman. A video has also been released by Grimes on ReasonedUK that appears to be a near word-for-word copy of a video released by the US right-wing platform PragerU.[16]

In July 2020, an interview with the historian David Starkey that Grimes published on his video platform sparked significant 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?" This prompted backlash, including condemnation by former Chancellor of the Exchequer Sajid Javid.[17] Starkey subsequently resigned from his fellowship at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, was fired by Canterbury Christ Church University, and was dropped by current and former publishers.[18][19] Following the airing of his interview with Starkey, Grimes blamed his inexperience at interviewing for his failure to pick up on and challenge Starkey's comments.[20] Shortly after, Grimes gained criticism again for inviting the controversial historian Andrew Roberts on to his show, who has been associated with pro-Apartheid movements and criticised for defending the Amritsar massacre.[21]

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.[22] 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.[23] Subsequently, in May 2020, the Metropolitan Police ended its investigation into Grimes and Halsall.[24]

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". PinkNews. 29 May 2020. Retrieved 3 July 2020.
  16. "Darren Grimes: What a true BeLeaver did next". Private Eye. London. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
  17. "David Starkey says slavery wasn't genocide as 'so many damn blacks survived'". Metro. 2 July 2020. Retrieved 3 July 2020.
  18. "David Starkey splits with Cambridge over 'so many damn blacks' comment". Sky News. 3 July 2020.
  19. Flood, Alison (3 July 2020). "David Starkey dropped by publisher and university after racist remarks". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 3 July 2020.
  20. "Grimes - Statement on Starkey Interview". Twitter.
  21. "Another Controversial Historian Uses Darren Grimes' Platform to Pursue Right-Wing Culture Wars". Byline Times. 7 July 2020. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
  22. "Brexit campaigner Darren Grimes raising funds to appeal against fine". BBC News. 25 July 2018.
  23. "Investigation: Vote Leave Ltd, Mr Darren Grimes, BeLeave and Veterans for Britain". Electoral Commission. 14 August 2019. Retrieved 31 December 2019.
  24. "Met Police end probe into pro-Brexit campaigners". BBC News. 8 May 2020. Retrieved 8 May 2020.
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