British Police Raid Home of Opposition Party Leader

By Staff, Agencies

The British Reclaim Party founder Laurence Fox was arrested in a Wednesday raid on his London home. Police say Fox encouraged criminal damage against the city’s much-maligned ULEZ cameras.

The Reclaim Party posted a video of the raid to X [formerly Twitter] on Wednesday morning. In the clip, at least five police officers can be seen examining items in the house while Fox sits on his couch smoking.

“Look how many coppers there are in my house; look at them coming to steal everything, take everything out of my house,” he says to the camera. “That, ladies and gentlemen, is the country that we live in.”

London’s Metropolitan Police said in a statement that officers “arrested a 45-year-old man on suspicion of conspiring to commit criminal damage to ULEZ cameras and encouraging or assisting offenses to be committed.”

ULEZ, or Ultra Low Emission Zone, cameras were introduced in central London in 2019, with the scheme expanded to all 32 London boroughs in August. ULEZ cameras read the license plates of vehicles entering the zone and apply a daily charge of £12.50 [$15.14] to those that fail to meet Euro-4 emissions standards for petrol vehicles or Euro-5 standards for diesel vehicles.

With these standards essentially banning pre-2006 petrol or pre-2015 diesel vehicles from the entire city, Mayor Sadiq Khan has been fiercely condemned by motorists for introducing the scheme. Gangs of masked vigilantes have taken to destroying and blocking the cameras, and the Metropolitan Police say that 595 cases of damage have been recorded, while 200 cameras have been stolen.

“I encourage them to tear down every single camera there is,” Fox said on Maajid Nawaz’s ‘Warrior Creed’ podcast on Tuesday. “I will be out there with my angle grinder,” Fox continued, adding that he “would encourage mass removal of the surveillance state.”

“I would be happy to be arrested myself,” Fox told Nawaz.

After campaigning against coronavirus restrictions in 2020, Fox founded the Reclaim Party to push back against what he called "extreme political correctness." Fox ran in the 2021 London mayoral election but secured only 1.9% of the vote. Khan won a second-round victory over Conservative Party candidate Shaun Bailey with 55% of the vote to 45%.