Darren Grimes

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Darren Grimes
File:Darren Grimes Headshot.jpg
Darren Grimes in 2021
Born (1993-07-22) 22 July 1993 (age 30)
Consett, County Durham, England
Nationality British
Education Tanfield Comprehensive School
Occupation Digital manager, Political activist
Website darrengrimes.com

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 but did not complete his degree.[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 Party donor and unsuccessful MEP candidate for the Brexit Party George Farmer, but the organisation declined to disclose its other donors. Farmer stated that identifying its donors would make them targets for abuse.[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]

In May 2020 Grimes 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".[14] 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. According to 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.[15] 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.[16][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?"[17] 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."[17] 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."[18] The former director of public prosecutions Ken Macdonald called the investigation "deeply threatening of free speech",[19] a view which was echoed by some Conservative Party MPs.[20] The investigation was subsequently dropped on the grounds that it was not proportionate.[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. The court agreed with Grimes' defence team that he was confused by the form.[23] Vote Leave withdrew their appeal and paid their fine, but Grimes' was overturned.[24] Subsequently, in May 2020, the Metropolitan Police ended its investigation into Grimes and Halsall.[25] In June 2021, the Chairman of the Electoral Commission apologised to Grimes in a Sunday Telegraph interview.[26]

See also

References

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  25. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  26. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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