Laurence Fox loses £10,000 deposit in London Mayor bid

Laurence Fox loses £10,000 deposit in London Mayor bid after getting 1.8% of vote and finishing in sixth place

  • The actor, 42, received 47,634 votes placing him in sixth behind a YouTuber
  • He fell short of the required 5% of first preference votes to return his deposit 
  • The actor said he was ‘profoundly moved’ by each of his votes 

Laurence Fox has lost his £10,000 deposit for his bid to be London Mayor after getting 1.8 per cent of the vote.

The actor, 42, who set up the Reclaim Party for his election race, won 47,634 votes placing him in sixth, behind YouTuber Niko Omilana whose policies included ‘Boris Johnson will be forced to shush’ and ‘the price of Fredos will go back to 5p’.

Candidates need five per cent of first-preference votes to get back their deposits, which only three candidates surpassed: Sadiq Khan, Shaun Bailey and the Green’s Sian Berry.

Laurence Fox has lost his £10,000 deposit for his bid to be London Mayor after getting 1.8 per cent of the vote

The actor )pictured in front of Piers Corbyn), 42, who set up the Reclaim Party for his election race, won 47,634 votes placing him in sixth

Liberal Democrat candidate Luisa Porrit placed in fourth with 111,716 votes, 4.4 per cent of the overall share.

Fox said on Twitter after the results were announced: ‘Thank you so much to the 47,634 of you who voted for me. I am profoundly moved. Sleep well.’ 

Earlier, Fox was seen chatting to mayoral rival Count Binface, who received 24,775 votes and finished ninth, above Jeremy Corbyn’s brother Piers.

During the interaction shared on social media, Fox asked to touch his opponent’s face and said he was feeling ‘pretty chipper’ about his prospects.  

Fox founded the Reclaim Party last year to fight the ‘culture wars’ and last month used the launch of his manifesto to defend his right to call people ‘paedophiles’ online after critics branded him ‘racist’.

Fox (pictured arriving at City Hall) founded the Reclaim Party last year to fight the ‘culture wars’

Earlier, Fox was seen chatting to mayoral rival Count Binface, who received 24,775 votes and finished ninth

In his speech in front of the statue of Sir Winston Churchill in Parliament Square in London, he said: ‘A year ago we lent our government our liberty for three short weeks to flatten the curve and now, a year on, they refuse to give back what never belonged to them in the first place.

‘There is no reason we are being kept in lockdown, we have been manipulated, frightened and outright lied to by this government, who instead of trusting us to get on with our lives are now flirting with even more authoritarian measures.’

He criticised the Government for refusing to rule out vaccine passports, and pledged to ‘take the politics out of policing’.

‘Police will police streets and not tweets,’ he said.

Fox also pledged to build 250,000 new homes and conduct a ‘full audit’ of green belt land.

(Left to right) UKIP’s Peter Gammons, Leader of the Reclaim Party, Laurence Fox, Social Democratic Party’s Simon Kelleher and Renew’s Kam Balayev

‘Precious landscapes (will be) preserved for eternity and unattractive scrubland (will be) transformed into beautiful and affordable housing,’ he said.

When asked how he was going to implement his policies of defunding schools and academies that teach critical social justice or race theory, he said: ‘It’s common sense.

‘You take the politics out of education, you take the politics out of policing. You say to a teacher “do your job, teach our children how to think, not what to think”.’

Reclaim has also promised free transport on all London bus and tube services for six months from the election, something critics said would bankrupt the network

Khan won a second term as mayor but with his majority hammered by Tory Shaun Bailey – and vowed to work to build bridges with Boris Johnson’s government.

The Labour incumbent will serve a truncated new three-year term after winning the election that was postponed from last year due to the pandemic.

London Mayor election results in full

First Count

Sadiq Khan (Lab) 1,013,721 (40.05%, -4.19%)

Shaun Bailey (C) 893,051 (35.28%, +0.25%)

Sian Berry (Green) 197,976 (7.82%, +2.02%)

Luisa Porritt (LD) 111,716 (4.41%, -0.21%)

Niko Omilana (Ind) 49,628 (1.96%)

Laurence Fox (Reclaim) 47,634 (1.88%)

Brian Rose (LRP) 31,111 (1.23%)

Richard Hewison (EU) 28,012 (1.11%)

Count Binface (Binface) 24,775 (0.98%)

Mandu Reid (Women) 21,182 (0.84%, -1.21%)

Piers Corbyn (LLL) 20,604 (0.81%)

Vanessa Hudson (AWP) 16,826 (0.66%)

Peter Gammons (UKIP) 14,393 (0.57%, -3.07%)

Farah London (Ind) 11,869 (0.47%)

David Kurten (Heritage) 11,025 (0.44%)

Nims Obunge (Ind) 9,682 (0.38%)

Steve Kelleher (Soc Dem) 8,764 (0.35%)

Kam Balayev (Renew) 7,774 (0.31%)

Max Fosh (Ind) 6,309 (0.25%)

Valerie Brown (Pink) 5,305 (0.21%)

Eliminated: Kam Balayev, Sian Berry, Count Binface, Valerie Brown, Piers Corbyn, Max Fosh, Laurence Fox, Peter Gammons, Richard Hewison, Vanessa Hudson, Steve Kelleher, David Kurten, Farah London, Nims Obunge, Niko Omilana, Luisa Porritt, Mandu Reid, Brian Rose

Second Count

Distribution of Balayev’s, Berry’s, Binface’s, Brown’s, Corbyn’s, Fosh’s, Fox’s, Gammons’s, Hewison’s, Hudson’s, Kelleher’s, Kurten’s, London’s, Obunge’s, Omilana’s, Porritt’s, Reid’s and Rose’s votes

Sadiq Khan (Lab) 1,206,034

Shaun Bailey (C) 977,601

Elected: Sadiq Khan

Eliminated: Shaun Bailey

Electorate 6,047,327; Turnout 2,531,357 (41.86%, -3.45%) 

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