Of all the buzz-phrases of 2023, the description of anti-Ulez-camera vandals as “blade runners” provokes the biggest eyeroll. Are you aware of this? People who chop down Ulez cameras because they disagree with the clean-air scheme have styled themselves “blade runners” – and a lot of the news media has simply gone along with it and started using it in coverage.
Sorry, but no. I’m looking at a picture of Harrison Ford in Blade Runner, and I’m looking at a picture of a bloke hanging off a lamp-post in a black balaclava and a straining Boohoo jacket, and I’m simply NOT going to demean the iconic Rick Deckard by asking: who wore it better? Having said all that, I did enjoy a recent interview with one of the camera vandals, in which he explained: “We are like a pack of lone wolves. We sometimes work together.”
And so to recently bailed 45-year-old nepo baby Laurence Fox, who you may recall was in the news last week for holding some incredibly disparaging views about women, even though one basically bought him his house. Laurence defo looks like he had the Blade Runner director’s-cut poster on his wall at Harrow. (Along with Pulp Fiction, a couple of the 90s supers – probably Claudia and Eva – and Bob Marley smoking a spliff, to leave the housemaster in no doubt he was the coolest guy in fifth form. Ethnic drapes: model’s own.)
Reminder-wise, Laurence is the scion of the Fox acting dynasty whose CV long outperformed his talent, with his biggest role being Kevin Whately’s sidekick, Sergeant Hathaway, in Lewis. Whately had, of course, previously played John Thaw’s sidekick in Inspector Morse. But Hathaway never got his own standalone ITV Sunday night drama – not through lack of trying, I’m told – and Laurence moved on to fill a clearly yawning attention void by appearing on Question Time to accuse a mixed-race audience member of racism against him, or something.
He also posed in a Maga hat. And look: as recent years have shown, Trumpism has been a strong draw for those who find the jobs that were available to their fathers are no longer there for them. But we’re normally talking about employment in Rust Belt steel production, or the auto industry, as opposed to prestige British drama. You can’t all be in Remains of the Day for ever, luv. There are other jobs.
Anyway, Lozza’s now the leader of a political party called Reclaim. He ran for London mayor, ironically failing to Reclaim his deposit. Presenting duties on GB News followed, as, inevitably, did his suspension for moronic remarks about a female journalist. This week found him on a conspiracist podcast stressing close ties to Ulez vandals, claiming, “I had a very, very wealthy guy the other day phone me up, and he said, ‘I’ll put 10 grand behind the counter of several Wickes’s in London, and anyone who wants to ... can go and get an angle-grinder for free.’” Forgive me, but I can’t stop laughing at the idea of a gazillionaire holding a hanky over his phone and rasping: “I’ve put 10 grand behind the counter of Wickes …” Ever the big man, Laurence went on to explain he’d be personally tearing down cameras, declaring, “I would be happy to be arrested myself.”
Can I shock you? He was not happy. For lo, the next day Laurence’s house was raided by five or six police – which will certainly make some Londoners wonder whether the best way to get the Met to make a house call when you’ve had a burglary is to be a twat on a podcast.
While they were searching his house, Laurence did a live speech into his laptop camera – but devastatingly failed to make it a version of the famous tears-in-rain monologue out of Blade Runner. You know the one – “I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion ... I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate …” Just imagine Laurence’s version: “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Cars having to do 20mph on the Tower Bridge Road. Men who aren’t allowed to see their kids – they know why – taking 19 goes with an angle-grinder to disable a camera in Chingford … All those moments will be lost, like tears in rain …” I mean, come on – HOW DID HE MISS? This, let’s face it, was always the problem with Laurence as an actor. Simply didn’t have the instinctive brilliance in the moment.
It was while he was in custody that the police told him he’d been let go by GBeebies. Again, great to see the Met going above and beyond – in this case performing the duties of a theatrical agent – but we do have to wonder if their time might now be better spent solving actual crimes. After being released on bail, Laurence emerged brandishing a copy of Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. Just incredible perspective. I don’t know how he follows that. Maybe quoting Hannah Arendt at a nightclub doorman who won’t let him in.
Unfortunately, though Fox is the self-parody wing of the argument, it’s worth remembering he sits on a continuum with senior Conservative politicians such as Iain Duncan Smith, who last month said he was “happy” with Ulez vandalism, before claiming to have been misrepresented. It’s interesting watching some of the more frothing scourges of identity politics try to create the identity of “motorist”, a marginalised group whose grievances we are all going to hear much, much more about in the run-up to the election. I’m sure a certain loser would say it’s all the behaviour of winners – but as he sweats on a call-up for next month’s I’m a Celeb, supposedly more serious politicians might do well to ask: is it really?
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
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