Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party is Bankrolled by One Man, New Accounts Reveal

Disgraced actor Laurence Fox’s hard-right Reclaim party was 100% reliant on one businessman for its income last year. 

According to the party’s newly released 2023 annual accounts, Reclaim didn’t receive a single donation from anyone other than Jeremy Hosking, who donated £700,000.

Hosking was previously a long-standing donor to the Conservative Party, and contributed £1.7 million to the Vote Leave campaign in 2016. He backed pro-Brexit candidates during the 2017 General Election, but attempted to set up a new political party, Brexit Express in 2019.

Meanwhile, he pushed for a no-deal Brexit, castigating Theresa May’s Brexit deal. Such No Deal campaigning contributed to May’s toppling and Boris Johnson coming to power.

Hosking backed the Brexit Party under Nigel Farage’s leadership but in 2019 switched to fund Fox’s new Reclaim party. He has given £3.6 million to Reclaim since 2019, according to Byline Times’ analysis of Electoral Commission records. He is the only major donor to the party in that time. 

Hosking was also major bankroller of ex-Conservative anti-vaxxer Andrew Bridgen, who defected to Reclaim in the last Parliament, but failed to secure the 5% of the vote needed to keep his deposit when standing for the party in July.

While Fox does not appear to have drawn a salary from Reclaim in 2023, accounts for 2022 show there were two members of staff collectively drawing employee costs of £149,034. 

On 4 August, amid racist rioting on England’s streets prompted by misinformation shared on social media in the wake of the stabbing of three young girls in Southport, Fox tweeted “it’s war” suggesting a backlash against “immigrant barbarians”.

Fox’s Party spent £615,134 in 2023, and donated to four Conservative culture-war focused candidates in this year’s General Election, after they signed up to a pledge card from the minor party. They were: Andrea Jenkyns, Brendan Clarke-Smith, Marco Longhi and Karl McCartney. All four lost their seats.

The Reclaim party’s latest accounts state: “During the year, the party had donations totalling £700,00 (2022: £716,084) that were reportable to the Electoral Commission. All donations were received as bank transfers. No donations were received in non-cash form.”

Reclaim was set up by the far-right former actor to “challenge the woke orthodoxy of ‘white privilege’ and ‘systemic racism’” .

Fox says he was “cancelled” from a 22-year acting career after making a string of controversial comments. He opposed the Black Lives Matter protests after the murder of George Floyd, and COVID-19 vaccines in 2020. 

In June 2022 he tweeted an image of a swastika made from the Progress Pride flag. And in August last year, Fox released a photo of himself in blackface, saying he had “racially transitioned”.

The next month, Fox went on GB News with then-host Dan Wootton where he made a sexist comment about journalist Ava Evans, saying “I wouldn’t shag that.” Both pundits were sacked soon after. 

The Reclaim party’s dependence on donations from one man could make the party financially vulnerable.

Byline Times asked Reclaim if Fox is concerned by this dependence on one donor and if that suggests the party lacks wider appeal, but is yet to hear back. We also reached out to Hosking’s team for comment. They are also yet to reply.   

A note on the party’s website states “the Reclaim Party is not accepting any 3rd party donations at this time” which suggests the dependency may be a deliberate arrangement. 

You can see Reclaim’s latest accounts here.

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Josiah Mortimer also writes the On the Ground column, exclusive to the print edition of Byline Times.

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