What The Home Raid On Laurence Fox Really Reveals About The Met Police

"They’re all over social media"

Hours ago, Metropolitan Police officers searched the home of one of the most prolific political figures in the UK.

The leader of the Reclaim Party, Laurence Fox, shared a video appearing to show up to five police officers at his house this morning.

It follows comments he made on Maajid Nawaz’s podcast yesterday, where he stated his intention to join the Bladerunners - a group of vigilantes who have cut down dozens of the London Mayor’s green tax cameras over the last few weeks.

Earlier today, while in police presence, he was recorded saying:

“This is what the police are, they don’t police with consent anymore. They police with fear and intimidation. That is the Stasi police force that we’ve got nowadays, instead of being on the streets solving crimes like the murder of the poor 15-year-old girl, they’re all over social media.

Laurence paints a grim reality. But it is one that official data unfortunately bears out. Met Police are failing on serious crime while seemingly allocating significant resources to speech-related “crime”.

Figures from the Home Office released in July showed that the Met Police failed to solve 82% of burglaries for the 2022-2023 financial year. That totalled an astonishing 47,050, an average of 129 burglaries a day. The national figure for unsolved burglaries was 77% in England and Wales.

This is despite the fact that London is one of the most surveilled cities in the world. Comparitech analysis published in May revealed that London is the only city outside of China among the top 10 most monitored. The capital hosts some 127,423 cameras for 9,648,110 people, equalling 13.21 cameras per 1,000 people. This translates to 209.94 cameras per square mile.

According to Statista, knife crime in the capital is back on the rise. During the 2020-2021 financial year, the Met recorded 10,150 offences, which rose to 12,786 offences last year.

Number of police recorded knife or sharp instrument offences in London from 2015-2023.

London’s overall crime rate per 100,000 last year was 100.9, compared with 92.8 in the previous year.

In short, an increase in serious crime rates has correlated with a vast majority of serious crime going unsolved.

Then, there is the Met’s politics.

In July 2023, a group of ‘Mass Non-Compliance’ protestors took to the streets of London and blocked roads to voice their disapproval of the government’s progressive encroachment on their civil liberties. Dozens of police promptly swarmed the march and arrested several protestors.

Rewind to October 2022, ten or so Just Stop Oil protestors sat down in the middle of a road in London and blocked traffic in protest of the Government’s inaction on the “climate crisis”. Met Police were nowhere in sight, leaving drivers frustrated as they were unable to get work.

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The Met exhibited identical bias with anti-lockdown and Sarah Everard protestors.

In March 2021, during Covid lockdowns, hundreds of people descended on Clapham Common to remember Sarah Everard after she was kidnapped, raped and murdered by Met Police officer Wayne Couzens. Footage revealed that while police attempted to disperse protestors, they did so without the heavy-handed techniques reserved for anti-lockdown protests a month earlier.

The astonishing display of double standards was topped off last month when the Met announced they were to pay damages to two women involved in the Everard protest despite them breaking the law. No such concessions were given to anti-lockdown protestors.

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Back in July this year, a trans-identified activist, Sarah Jane Baker, explicitly called for violence against ‘Trans Exclusionary Feminists’ (TERFs) at a Trans Pride rally in London. The moment was even recorded on tape, and shortly went viral.

Did Met Police promptly arrest Baker 24 hours after confessing her intent to break the law, like Fox? No. They initially refused to open an investigation. Baker’s comments, unlike Fox’s, directly broke the law, constituting a direct incitement to violence.

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On the same podcast with Maajid yesterday, Laurence stated he would be “happy to be arrested” if he was caught removing the ULEZ cameras alongside the Bladerunners. Reports have since confirmed that he has been arrested on suspicion of “conspiring to commit criminal damage”.

A man as intelligent as Laurence knows what he is risking purveying in such discourse. He literally asked for his arrest. In doing so, what he has done is once again exemplify the politicisation of the Met, their questionable priorities and woeful track record on serious crime in one fell swoop.

He also gets the added benefit of universal press coverage. Any press is good press, or so the saying goes...