Laurence Fox exclusive: I'm standing for London Mayor to offer a voice to those being dominated into silence

Laurence Fox is to fight Sadiq Khan in the upcoming Mayor of London elections, vowing to “offer a voice to those who are being dominated into silence”.

The actor and leader of the anti-Woke Reclaim Party has revealed to The Telegraph that he is entering the race for City Hall as part of the fight against "extreme political correctness".

Mr Fox will also fight on a platform for lifting lockdown as soon as he is elected in May rather than waiting until June, when all restrictions are due to be removed.

The news came as new polling showed a significant minority of Londoners are uncomfortable about the London Mayor's 'woke' policies such as his review of statues.

One in four voters in the capital thought Mr Khan was "too woke" - although 27 per cent found him "not woke enough".

A similar proportion - 25 per cent - were against a review ordered by Mr Khan into whether statues should be removed because of links to slavery or colonialism, against 39 per cent in favour.

Mr Fox hopes that his push to end lockdown sooner will see him win votes from Mr Khan, who launched his re-election campaign last week and has been noticeably keener to go further with lockdowns than the Conservative government.

The survey, conducted by Savanta ComRes among 1,000 people in London in late February for the Reclaim Party, found that 25 per cent of Londoners wanted lockdown lifted by the end of this month. Some 58 per cent wanted it gone by the end of May. Among Londoners aged 18-34, the latter figure rises to 63 per cent.

The poll reveals shifting public concern over the economic impact of lockdown in London. More people than not are concerned about losing their job (43 per cent concerned to 35 per cent unconcerned) and 75 per cent say that they expect small businesses in their area to close permanently as a result of the pandemic.

Mr Fox said: “I am standing for London mayor. With almost all older and vulnerable people having got their jab, I want the lockdown lifted straight away. The Government has said vaccines are working, hospitalisations and deaths are tumbling, but we are still being told we won’t be able to resume normal life until mid-summer at the earliest."

“Both the main parties are competing in this dreary race to be the last to set the country free. Both Tory and Labour have got this badly wrong. I want London – and indeed the rest of the country – to be allowed to get back to work and play immediately – not by late June.”

Mr Fox's run for office is being funded entirely by a new single donation from former Tory donor Jeremy Hosking. Electoral law caps campaign spending at £420,000.

As a small child I always thought that Britain was brilliant at everything. I sat in secondary school being told stories of great battles and inventors. Brave kings and wars that lasted a hundred years. Of Hurricanes and Spitfires dancing around the sky, vastly outnumbered, holding fast against the relentless juggernaut of fascism that had swept across Europe, ready to cross the Channel to suffocate England in its deadly embrace.

Both my grandfathers served in the war. I am being deliberately flowery and rhetorical, but I feel it’s important to confess just how in love I am with these tiny island splotches we call home, and how immovable I am in that love.

The last time I felt this annoyed at the capriciousness of those who govern us was during the build-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Like now, dodgy dossiers were flung around with supercilious deceit. Unlike now, those dodgy dossiers were examined and interrogated.

Do you remember when the BBC used to do its job? Me too.

We currently find ourselves in a similarly dire situation, albeit in a different manifestation. Public debate has been strangled.

Most crucially and pressingly is the absolute refusal to hold anything remotely resembling an open debate surrounding Covid policy and lockdowns. Leading experts in epidemiology and evidence-based medicine have been smeared and silenced by a Government hell bent on one ideology, at the expense of all other considerations – such as our children’s education, cancer diagnoses and other lives lost.

Did the pandemic modellers understand we would have one of the worst death tolls despite having some of the most severe lockdown restrictions?

At what cost – in these lives and livelihoods – do lockdowns come: and why should it be heresy to question any aspect of this?

Our children will pay for the damage done by this fear-led debate all their lives. Whole areas of public discourse have become minefields where a wrong step sees your career and livelihood ended overnight. This is just the latest sad manifestation of an ever-present danger: the slow demoralisation of the population, fuelled by the navel-gazing revisionism of our university.

There’s the presence of a deep and genuine hate of who we are and what we’ve done. Such guilty reflection has now reached crisis point. Even mild patriotism is branded as racism. Patriotism has nothing to do with skin colour. I am patriotic about the values Britain stands for – democracy, fairness and the rule of law – and I always will be.

We have progressed from resistance to female suffrage and the chemical castration of gay men in a darker and more fearful past. Freedom of speech and elections by secret ballot have delivered us some of the most liberal values on earth.

Why must we focus on Freedom of Speech? Because that is what ensures democracy and government that fully reflects the views of the people. An attack of on freedom of speech is an attack on democracy itself.

The capital city is the heart of the nation, the central celebration of a nation’s heritage. Statues stand to the great and the not so good to teach us about those who came before. They are examples but also warnings. They remind us of the fights and follies that have ultimately led to us becoming such a tolerant and diverse society.

Deliberately or by apathy, our sense of who we are, where we are and what we are is being undermined.

Boris Johnson says ‘there’s nothing wrong with being woke’. Keir Starmer takes the knee to a hard-left organisation that seeks to undermine of all the things we hold dear, our families, our shared language and heritage. Sadiq Khan and his nation-hating cronies have their jealous eyes on our statues and institutions.

Where does his desire to strip us of our history end? Surely Queen Victoria, the epitome of empire and white privilege, should be torn from her plinth in front of Buckingham Palace to be swiftly replaced with a monument to Greta Thunberg or Piers Morgan?

Why are none of our politicians standing to defend us? I am livid at the disrespect being shown to the sacrifices made by previous generations to protect our values, tolerance and freedom. This extreme political correctness must be resisted.

I am pleased to announce that I am a candidate to be the next Mayor of London. I look forward to speaking up for those who are being dominated into silence.