“There is a huge chasm now between our Parliament… and the people”, says MP Andrew Bridgen as he announces he will not be returning to the Conservative Party and has joined the upstart Reclaim Party, founded by My Son Hunter star Lawrence Fox, instead.
A longstanding Conservative Member of Parliament, who was recently expelled for comments on Coronavirus vaccines and excess deaths, has announced he is joining the free speech-focussed Reclaim party, becoming their first representative in the UK’s House of Commons.
Speaking at a press event in London on Wednesday, Mr Bridgen said: “There is a huge chasm now between our Parliament and what goes on in Westminster and the people” and said it had become impossible for the establishment parties to be part of the solution to the nation’s troubles because they were the problem.
Andrew Bridgen (right) and Laurence Fox during a Reclaim Party press conference at One Great George Street in Westminster, London. The MP for North West Leicestershire will be first representative of Laurence Fox’s party in the House of Commons. Mr Bridgen was expelled from the Conservative Party for comparing vaccines to the Holocaust. Picture date: Wednesday May 10, 2023. (Photo by Stefan Rousseau/PA Images via Getty Images)
Bridgen, who represents a historically working class, former coal mining area in England’s East Midlands county of Leicestershire focussed on freedom and freedom of speech in his speech, announcing that he was to “cross the floor” and become a Reclaim Party MP and criticised the influential power of the “pharmaceutical lobby”.
He said:
…there are many in parliament, in the country who said I’d do better to keep quiet, shut up, keep my head down. Lord knows I’ve been offered enough incentives to do so… we must ensure we do not repeat the mistakes of the past. We must have more scrutiny before they are administered to the public. People must not be coerced into taking medicines they do not require, and which may do them great harm.
…It is almost as if our parliament is working for another master because it is certainly not serving the people of this country. Parliament has also abdicated its duty to the electorate. It has become a uniparty, dissent is not tolerated, and there has been no real opposition for quite some time. It is no longer the politics of left and right in this country, it is the politics of right and wrong.
Reclaim party leader Laurence Fox, a well-known British actor with roles including Victoria, Inspector Lewis, The Professor and the Madman, and who starred as Hunter Biden in Breitbart’s My Son Hunter echoed Bridgen’s words, saying Westminster’s Conservative and Labour parties were two cheeks of the same arse.
Bridgen was suspended from the Conservative Party after he said the forcing of experimental vaccines on the global public was the worst abuse of human rights since the Holocaust. These comments have been called antisemitic, but Bridgen has strongly rejected that claim, and today announced he was launching a defamation claim against former UK health minister Matt Hancock over them.
The MP, who was seen wearing his now-customary paperclip on the lapel of his jacket — a historic symbol of resistance against fascism in Norway — said of his legal case: “Mr Hancock’s accusation of antisemitism is a false slur to deliberately try and shut down valid concerns raised by me on behalf of my constituents and thousands of others around the world about the safety and efficacy of the experimental Covid-19 injections… every elected representative should be allowed to challenge government policy without being shut down by malicious slurs.”
It was reported in January that Bridgen had been suspended, and was permanently expelled in April. At the time, Bridgen said he had been expelled to make an example of a prominent critic of vaccines and lockdowns.
The Reclaim Party, which was founded by Fox in 2020 and campaigns in opposition to the progressive obsessions of government bodies and protested against the lockdowns. While the party has yet to enjoy success at the ballot box, Fox and Bridgen said today this was the beginning of a targeted campaign to take on a limited number of seats at the next election, targeting specifically those held by woke politicians at odds with their own voters.
