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Aug. 8, 2019 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole
39:15
Delingpod 31: Darren Grimes
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Welcome to the Dellingpod with me James Dellingpole.
And I am so excited about this week's guest, and I know I always say that, but I have been trying to track this man down for quite some time, and he kept turning me down, and finally I've got him.
So what it shows to me is that it wasn't that I wasn't famous enough for him.
It was for legal reasons.
Absolutely.
His name is Darren Grimes.
Hi, Jim.
I've already forgotten his title.
Digital... Manager.
Digital Manager at the IEA.
At the Institute of Economic Affairs at the IEA.
So, Darren, tell me how it was you came to be involved in the Brexit campaign.
So, actually, it's a bit of a winding road, right?
We like winding roads.
Yes.
So I wasn't actually...
I wasn't interested in politics when I was young.
I wasn't actually politically aware, and I mean that in the literal sense.
I wasn't politically aware at all until I was about 19.
Well, I think everyone is to a certain extent.
I certainly had beliefs and, I guess, a sort of...
A background of ideas and values, but they certainly weren't aligned to any...
I wasn't aware of them being aligned to any political party.
But you're Welsh?
I'm not.
No, I'm from the North East.
Do you know what?
You're the second person this week I've confused from the North East.
Because the accent is quite similar, isn't it?
Well, I get that a lot.
It's quite lyrical.
But I also think that's just innuendo for homosexual.
LAUGHTER That too.
Yeah.
Okay, so you're from the North East.
Exactly.
And, well, the North East was soundly, soundly Brexit, wasn't it?
My entire family voted Leave, yeah.
And, but at the same time, it's quite working class, quite Labour voting.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, so I'm just trying to get a sense of the atmosphere you grew up in.
Are you from a working class background?
No.
Very much so.
I mean, so my granddad was a minor, Labour all his life, until 2017, actually.
And that's because of Brexit.
He couldn't vote for them again after...
And this sounds like terrible cliché because I spend all day tweeting this sort of stuff out, but it's true.
You know, that entire family was comfortable voting for the Conservative Party.
You know, the fact that this...
That stereotypically, working class Labour family felt comfortable voting for the Conservative Party should be a massive wake-up call, I think, for a political class that just hasn't seemed to get it.
I reckon that they just think that...
We Brexiteers, after three years of a constant attrition of our morale, would just go away.
That we'd just forget about it.
You know, the biggest democratic mandate in British electoral history, we'd just be like, oh, do you know what?
I'm a bit bored of this.
I'm going to give up.
I can't be arsed anymore.
There has been a kind of war of attrition, hasn't there?
Absolutely.
They've been trying to...
The entirety of the establishment, which is pretty enormous when it extends from The Guardian and The Times and the BBC to pretty much every institution, the World Bank, the big corporations, the city firms, the big law firms.
I'm trying to think.
I mean, obviously the European Union itself.
And they want us to think, well, as you say...
We just had to accept that we're not going to get it.
Well, exactly.
I mean, but I think they failed to realise that for communities like that where I grew up, having an organisation with an acronym tell them that they're going to be poor, when they've got nothing, James, these are communities that feel like they've got nothing, that they're losing their voice, they're losing what they...
I guess that perceived sense of British values, you know, freedom, liberty, democracy, all of these values are being slowly eroded.
So when you turn to them and say you've got a Labour politician turning to them and saying, oh, but you're going to be poorer because this organisation with an acronym, this international quango, tells you that you're going to be poorer.
And they're just like, right, okay, well what about these existential values and what have always, I think, been commonly associated, you see it in Hong Kong with the Union Jack being flown.
These values that we've always stood for that have been constantly eroded at an alarming pace, I think.
Whether that be free speech, whether that be democratic values...
So I think it's about time that they walk up.
And that's why I think Boris is great, I'm not going to lie.
We'll come to Boris in a minute.
I can tell from the way you're talking that you've shifted quite a lot since you were a working class lad in the North East.
You've obviously developed your ideas.
But at school, what was this kind of...
There was none.
So I left school and did an art degree.
I was a famously fashion student, Darren Grimes.
And did you want to go into fashion?
Yeah, I wanted to be a pattern designer.
And would you have made more money?
I would.
Well, it entirely depends, actually.
Absolutely.
I think it's fair to say that had I been top of the game, yeah, absolutely I would have.
But famously, arts graduates don't make all that much money.
Well, most of them don't go into...
My eldest went to art college and he didn't end up doing fine arts.
Well, exactly.
My brother, who again went to...
I did drop out.
I didn't actually graduate.
So after the referendum, I dropped out because I just thought I can't stay out of this fight.
I'm far too addicted.
So you were a sort of fashion student and then you had these skills?
Yeah, so digital skills definitely.
So I'd had to learn all of these things.
I mean, going back a step at school...
I had a pretty horrendous time at school.
It was a pretty rough state, comprehensive, in County Durham.
And I was quite badly bullied for being a young gay man, I guess.
Did you know you were gay at that time?
Yeah, I've known since I was 11, actually.
I came out when I was 13, so very early.
Were you the only gay in the village?
I think...
Well, I was certainly the only out-gay in the village.
Yeah.
So yeah, I think to a certain extent that does ring true.
Did you not have a...
I mean, I can imagine, I can well imagine you were bullied, but did you not have a kind of circle of cool, of arty kids who liked you?
I mean, I was...
So I was always...
I had a sort of protective circle of the sort of popular kids that, yeah.
So I guess to a certain extent, yeah.
But I mean, that didn't stop me being sort of smacked around and stuff outside of school.
But I think that actually put me up well for the fight against the Electoral Commission.
Yes, which we're going to come to soon.
It's very exciting.
I'm looking forward...
I'm building up.
This is like a long intro.
Okay, so you acquired these digital skills where?
So I acquired them actually from my family desktop when I was about 13.
I didn't really go out very much as a kid.
So I taught myself Photoshop whilst I was using social media platforms and sort of built it up from there really.
So I've been using it for over 10 years.
So what were you doing with these girls?
I was just, I was actually sort of, I was making money.
This is going to sound really weird and niche.
You're getting some real exclusives here, James.
But I used to host fan sites.
So for celebrities and make the money from the Google advertising from them.
So people would actually host fan sites on these celebrities and then drive traffic to them because there was interest in these celebrities.
So I used to make money from the Google.
So who were the celebrities?
People like, I mean, High School Musical was big back then.
So there was, on all of these High School Musical stars, Kanye West was one of them.
Kanye West almost sued me actually because they had uploaded an exclusive, so it wasn't out yet.
tour guide for his latest tour.
And I got a call when I was about 13 from his solicitor in LA.
And I thought it was a joke.
I thought I was being set up.
But the person said, if you don't remove it, we're going to come for you.
So I shut them down pretty quickly after that Yeah.
But again, maybe that set me up for a few legal challenges.
Really?
And were you making a reasonable living at this?
No, I wasn't making good money, but I was certainly making pocket money that I could, you know, go out and buy relatively...
Because my mother, I was brought up by my mam on her own, so we didn't have money at all.
And I, yeah, random, I know, but...
It is random.
So, okay, so from there, you had these skills.
Exactly.
How on earth did you get involved in them?
So, I then, in 2014, when I was doing my art foundation, I applied for a BBC programme called BBC Generation 2015.
Now, at this time, I was actually a Liberal Democrat.
Yeah.
And I think the reasons were, I thought, okay, I'm a classical liberal.
I'm on the right.
I must be a liberal democrat.
You later find out that the liberal democrats are neither liberal nor democratic.
So that was a mistake.
But because I was young, from the northeast, gay and liberal democrat, I got to do quite a lot of media.
So I was like...
Did the BBC ask you what you wanted?
The BBC, yeah, yeah.
So you said, I'm Lib Dem and I'm gay, and of course you were straight in there!
Exactly, yeah, of course.
I ticked all the right boxes.
But I used it for, you know, I milked it for all it was worth, and I mean, I think you have to, unfortunately, in this game.
Yeah.
I certainly don't get asked on now.
Funny that.
Yeah.
Wrong kind of cake.
Exactly.
That's exactly right.
I'm sure we'll come on to that.
But yeah, from then I... So I did quite a lot of media and then when the referendum came around...
Actually before the referendum I did a bit of work for Norman Lamb, who I've still got an enormous amount of time for.
I think he's a fantastic politician and...
With real values and just integrity, which is actually pretty bloody rare in politics.
He's quite good on drugs legalisation.
He is, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So after I did a bit of work for him, he lost and Tim Farron won and I thought, okay, I can't be part of a social democrat party.
That doesn't stand for anything.
And I also couldn't understand how, when the question of the referendum started to be posed...
How I could support a political union, basically giving more and more powers away to a remote and unaccountable bureaucracy in Brussels, whilst also arguing that we need a real devolution agenda in this country, you know, devolving power as close to the individual as possible to empower communities like that where I came from, that feel that they don't have a voice, that they don't have any purchase in society.
How could I argue?
The two things just weren't compatible, in my opinion.
So I joined the Tories.
I'm still a member of the Tories.
We hope and pray.
Yeah, so that's the sort of windy route.
So, okay, but the Vote Leave particular campaign, what was the...
So I set up Be Leave in December of 2015 because I was actually approached by someone from Vote Leave who said we would love you to set up Liberal Leave, which was the sort of the idea of a Lib Dem outreach group.
Because at this time you were still a Lib Dem.
I was, yeah.
And Believe was what?
Believe was a sort of, I guess, because I had just done Norman Lamb's leadership campaign, I thought that I think there's a real constituency here of liberal, internationalist, outward-looking...
I hate the word.
How naive you were.
I mean, I bet there were about five.
Well, do you know what?
There was quite a lot of support for young classical liberals because don't forget that I was always on the right of the Lib Dems and therefore I probably knew the five people.
So I was able to gather these five people.
Right.
And I'm really proud of it.
It was like my little baby.
But of course it was a baby that, you know, others decided was a monster.
So somebody spotted this thing on the Vote Leave campaign.
They incorporated it into their...
So they definitely promoted it as one of their outreach groups.
But I maintain to this day it had its independence.
And as a court of law found itself...
So yeah, that made me, that saw me go up and down the country again through the BBC and other networks making the case for Leave.
At this time you were still young, photogenic, you're still those two, and still gay, but you were masking, or you were still a Liberal Democrat.
No, I wasn't.
I joined the Tories in December 2015, so around about the time, just after I set up Believe, actually.
So, no, I wasn't a Lib Dem, but I think I still, in the BBC sort of mindset, I still would have been seen as that liberal...
Yes.
Yeah.
Okay.
And so how did you...
You were, at some point, given a chunk of money...
Yes, so the donation came...
I mean, Vote Leave realised that they had spent everything they could and the Electoral Commission had given them permission saying that they could make donations to other campaigns.
This was a donation of...
I think it was something to do with fishing for leave.
Do you remember when they had that fantastic thing on the Thames with...
Yeah, the flotilla.
Exactly.
With Bob Geldof and on his champagne cruise flipping V signs at the fishermen.
Wasn't that just the ultimate picture of how those people look at them?
I reckon that was, if you had to sum up, the moment where the campaign, well, was perfectly illustrated and when it turned, I think, when people thought, hang on a second, working class, horny-handed, sons of tall fishermen versus...
Bob Gellof and his gym palace with these sneery metropolitan elitists.
Exactly.
I know.
It was fantastic.
It encapsulated everything wrong with the Remain campaign, didn't it?
So you were involved with the Fisherman?
I wasn't, no.
But that's how Vote Leave got this advice given to them from the Electoral Commission.
So they decided to donate to a campaign that they thought was good, was doing some good stuff online, that they had been retweeting now and again.
And that was you?
That was me.
And how much money did you get?
£676,000.
Wasn't that a bit weird?
Did they write you a cheque?
No, so it went straight into digital...
Because remember, this was two weeks before the actual campaign, before June 23rd.
So there wasn't time to go out and sort of...
I would have loved to have done a sort of rally with a load of young people, you know, putting forward an actual, I think, optimistic for younger generations to not be swallowed up into this bureaucratic nightmare.
But there wasn't any time to do anything like that, so we just put it all into online campaigning.
And since doing that, three years of my life have been absolute hell.
How did you...
I mean, £650,000 must have been more money than you'd ever seen in your life.
I mean, yeah.
My mum made about £15,000 a year.
So, yeah, this was...
And so, how do you go about spending that kind of money in two weeks?
Well, you...
I mean, it's...
So you describe it, I think, as being a bit like a slot machine.
You put in an amount of money, it doesn't discriminate, and it disseminates Facebook advertising through that.
You could put in however much you wanted and reach, obviously, a much higher audience with the more money.
Oh, so you can buy Facebook.
Exactly, yeah.
So One Believe ad reached 4.5 million people.
And that's not insignificant.
That is a massive...
And that costs...
That costs significant, especially during a referendum campaign when Facebook know that people are wanting to buy the...
The ramp up.
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
And that's really interesting.
Okay, so let's get to the exciting bit now.
The bit where your life was, I mean, ruined, really.
Yeah.
For how long?
For three years.
For three years.
Yeah.
And you're how old now?
I'm 26, just turned 26.
It is not right for a chap of 23 to have his three years of his life.
I was 22 at the time of the referendum, so yeah, completely turned upside down.
I mean, so you have to be...
You go to an auditor, which I'd never done before, you get all of your accounts audited by an accountant that has a certain qualification, and So it can't just be any Tom, Dick or Harry.
So I went to this accountant, got all of my accounts audited.
The accountant pored over them for quite a few days, actually, and was like, oh, these are all hunky-dory.
Sent them off to the Electoral Commission.
They published them.
And then some journalist at BuzzFeed said, this spending return that has been published in an open and transparent way and been signed off by an auditor is clearly dodgy.
So it was Buzzfeed who started the witch hunt?
It was Buzzfeed, exactly, yeah, yeah.
Who was the journalist?
Marie Le Conte, is it?
I can't remember.
So, let's just give you pause.
I mean, do journalists really know...
Wasn't there some sinister mastermind behind this?
Was it really Marie LeConte, just the kind of random online journalist?
To be honest, I think to a certain extent it probably was because I think it suits their narrative.
I think that's always been the narrative that...
People, like, again, I keep going back to families like mine, but it's not to go into anecdote, but they look at communities like that in County Durham and they think there is no way in hell that these people could have reached a logical conclusion that leaving the European Union is right for them.
They must have been duped.
It must have been Russia.
It must have been dodgy cash.
It must have been dodgy advertising.
Okay.
So, it fits the narrative.
So anyway, they started this off.
The Electoral Commission started their first investigation.
They closed it down pretty quickly and said, now to see here, my lord.
And off we went.
And then in 2017...
Early 2017, they opened a second investigation because obviously, again, you've got this hive mind mentality, people saying, oh, well, you know, there must be something dodgy here, something really fishy has gone on.
And they cave to pressure and they open a second investigation.
Again, that second investigation is shut down.
It's all cleared.
It's absolutely fine.
And then, Jolien Maugham, have you heard of him?
Yes.
He is a wealthy Remain activist, judicial activist.
Very wealthy.
I mean, he gets pretty high fat fees.
Exactly.
So he raised some of these fat fees online and he started a judicial review into the Electoral Commission's second decision.
So they closed down that investigation.
He wanted them to reopen it.
Now this is when I think we start to get into really dodgy territory.
When these rich, wealthy activists can force a so-called independent quango to open an investigation, a third investigation, into the same matter and ruin my life.
So anyway, they opened this third investigation after this judicial review by this wealthy Remain activist.
And after a long battle of back and forth with me and my solicitor, bearing in mind I didn't have any money for a solicitor, so I had to start doing my own crowdfunding.
Yes, of course you did.
And the Electoral Commission decided to fine me £20,000 and refer me to the police after this third investigation.
That was the outcome of this third investigation.
I didn't find out that I had been referred to the police or fined £20,000 after Until I listened to Radio 4 on the morning at 7 o'clock and I mean this is probably too much information but I was actually with, I just started dating someone for the first time and I was with this person.
We'd been on a few dates and this person heard on the radio with me that I was under investigation by the police and I'd been fined £20,000.
Now, as I'm sure you can imagine, that was probably one of the most awkward experiences of my life.
I had my mother calling me saying, what's going on, sweetheart?
I don't understand.
You know, she's a single parent back home.
one she doesn't understand westminster politics she doesn't follow it but two i don't think you can begin to comprehend how it is that your son has been referred to the police when he did nothing wrong you know she was just so upset you mean so some people must have thought and obviously all the remainers thought this Well there's no smoke without a fire.
Exactly.
There's no way that a quango like the Charities Commission would possibly pursue an innocent person.
All of these crangles.
They're judge, jury and executioner, James, and that's the problem.
They have these powers that I think go...
So in court, for example, my QC argued that the Electoral Commission had gone way beyond the powers that are actually given to them within the Act.
So within the Party Elections and Referendums Act, they'd actually far exceeded their brief, basically.
Yes.
And the judge...
My judgment was not the judge reducing the fine.
It wasn't the judge saying that the fine had been unreasonable.
This was a judge comprehensively rejecting, quashing the Electoral Commission's entire notice.
I mean, that...
That's pretty damning.
It is pretty damning.
Hang on.
You've actually...
I've skipped ahead.
You've skipped ahead.
I want to know about the misery.
I want to know, okay, you're back with your new man, and he's thinking, what have I got myself involved with?
Exactly.
So you can imagine that didn't last very long after that.
Gangster.
Gangster.
Mafia.
Yeah, exactly.
It didn't last very long after that, so I think it's safe to see.
But you must have been a wreck.
I was.
I said, I think you'd better leave, and off he went.
And I called my mother, and she was distraught.
She said, look, if you need me...
So she bought...
Earlier when I was telling you about, I think I've always had ideas and values, I have one political memory that I didn't even realise was political at the time when my mum told me her proudest moment in life and that was when she bought her council house under Right to Buy.
Thanks to Margaret Thatcher.
Exactly.
And I didn't know that at the time, of course, that it was thanks to Margaret Thatcher later.
So you have all these things that you start to jot together and realise that you've got ideas and values that all lead to one political thread.
And my mother said, listen, Pess, if you need us to sell the house, I'll do it.
And I just burst into tears.
I just felt like a selfish, awful human being.
But of course, it was completely out of my control.
I was an ant under the large boot of the state.
And it was a state that, a piece of state machinery that has investigated me three times in the same issue, on the same issue, and only came to a damning, so they fined me their maximum fine, which the judge had said had he actually found that the commission's which the judge had said had he actually found that the commission's reasoning was valid would have been far too Right.
What was the...
Alleged.
I ticked the wrong box.
I ticked the wrong box.
So what were the boxes?
The boxes were individual or unincorporated association.
So there was a box for unincorporated association, but the box in question was individual or political party.
I wasn't a political party, so I ticked individual.
Well, that would make sense to me as well.
The judge said that their form was far too confusing, but they chose to come after me for ticking this box.
And let's just, for those who don't know what the Electoral Commission is, I mean, it's a quango, which means it's a sort of arm's length government regulatory body, supposedly independent.
And I had a look...
There was a tweet pointing out the people who make up the Electoral Commission.
It seems to me that they're all Labour, Lib Dems, certainly all Remainers, aren't they, I think?
In 2010, the one woman who led the investigation into me, she tweeted...
Sorry, she didn't tweet.
She wrote on her Facebook account, so Guido reported this.
This is all on Guido.
She said, I can't believe something like, I can't believe you lot have elected these people again.
You know what they did last time.
So this was, of course, after the general election when the Tories were elected.
And you just think these are the supposed guardians of our democracy.
Yeah.
It's just, to me, I reckon the whole thing needs to be scrapped and it needs to be independent, retired judges that are brought in every three years or something so you can guarantee independence.
Because had this all been handled by the courts initially, first investigation, you go to court, I would have been cleared almost three years ago.
I would have had three years of my early 20s.
Yes, exactly.
Well, I want to hear a bit more about this because, first of all, I want to know how...
So you set up a crowdfund.
You knew how to do that, obviously, because of your digital skills.
Fortunately.
Were you surprised by the response?
I was, yeah.
So my mother actually, she started reading some of the comments that...
So, a lot of the comments online would say, listen, at Darren Grimes, I can't wait for you to go to prison.
You're going to love being raped.
I can't wait for you to be raped.
Your mum saw these?
She saw all...
And this was daily.
So, I used to get this stuff...
This is on the crowdfunding account?
No, no.
So, the reason I mention the crowdfunding is because after she'd started reading all of this abuse that I get on Facebook and Twitter...
I used to direct it to the crowdfunding page because there were 3,000 people that donated an average donation of £30 who were all commenting, saying, you're a hero.
Thank you so much for doing what you've done for the past three, four years.
And she would read all of this and feel really encouraged.
Because, you know, at the end of the day, this is her little boy.
This is...
Of course.
On his own in the big bad city in London.
She's 300 nod miles away and she feels entirely powerless.
So I got to the point, James, where I wouldn't even call my mother because I'd be so worried that I would put the fear of God into her and I would end up exacerbating her concern and her worry for her child.
So I had to distance myself from my mother and I was already feeling quite isolated and it's quite a lonely experience fighting this sort of really big legal challenge.
You did have a sort of haunted look about.
You were like a man apart from the...
You could be in a crowded room and you were still kind of...
Exactly.
Definitely.
Because no one can ever understand what it feels like.
No one can...
And don't get me wrong, I've had amazing friends and actually I... I became religious during all of this.
You found God?
I did, yeah.
Interesting.
Was it a kind of blinding...?
No, no, it wasn't.
It was a gradual...
My friend said...
I'd actually followed someone on Twitter who was a clergyman.
And he's a Tory clergyman, rare breed.
And my friend said, do you want to come to one of his services?
And it was Ash Wednesday.
And it was that, it was the authenticity of the service, you know, you've got that ornate King James Bible being lit.
Quite high church.
High church.
High looking, quite gayly anyway, smells and bells.
But I agree, I love that stuff.
Proper liturgy.
Exactly, yeah, exactly.
And you've got that lovely sermon that you come away from feeling grounded and And I think actually that's what the church offered me.
It was, and what God offered me, it was that grounding.
I felt grounded.
And that must sound quite odd, but you've got to remember that.
I felt completely knocked off of my feet.
Of course.
You know, I felt, and had I lost this, it's no exaggeration to say I would have been completely bankrupt.
This is what your QC presumably advised you, or your solicitor?
Absolutely.
And how did you go, so you crowdfunded 90 grand?
I crowdfunded 95,000 almost.
And does that, I can't imagine that goes that far in it.
So it gets, I mean, it gets you a QC, it doesn't get you that far, but it got, it paid for my QC. And how did you know that you, where to find a QC? I didn't, my solicitor, my solicitor did.
How did you find a solicitor?
So, well actually, I asked someone, I said, do you know any good solicitors?
And they said, yeah, this person seems decent.
Reach out to them, I did reach out to them.
And they also did a good job.
What do they rate your chances at?
Because it's such an untested area of law, and they are literally arguing over a so-called, well, supposedly incorrectly ticked box, it's very hard to actually determine what the likelihood or the outcome of it is going to be.
So I had to basically...
I mean...
I had to run on the idea that I would be bankrupt, sat here talking to you now.
I would be doing this podcast whilst bankrupt.
Fortunately, that isn't the case.
But I've got nothing, so I had nothing to lose.
There was part of me, I must admit, there was part of me that thought...
I should just try and raise the money and pay the fine and just let this all slide.
I almost did that.
Did you?
But then I thought I've got nothing.
I started with nothing.
If I go bankrupt, I will still have nothing.
Therefore, I think they picked the wrong fight.
They picked the wrong person.
They did.
And that's why I started playing on my tiny violin earlier and telling you about the experience I had at school.
Because I think that did set me up, you know, that sort of years and years of that attrition.
Because this has been years and years of attrition.
And I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, actually.
But I think I was ready for it.
Do you think you're a better person as a result?
I think, yeah.
Well, I certainly think I'm a better person as a result of the friendships I've built over this period, the relationship with my church and faith after that period.
And I imagine there'll be people listening to this podcast and thinking, oh God, he's a God-botherer now.
But I don't think you can actually understand the comfort that it's been, actually.
And you long for that, that source of being rooted in something bigger than yourself.
Because you feel so lost in that moment.
And I talked earlier about the isolation.
But now, I feel free as a bird.
I feel absolutely bloody fantastic.
And they picked the wrong man.
I do think that.
So...
Was there any question that you might get compensation for the suffering?
I mean, this is a vexatious case on their part, really.
No, I've not heard anything.
Well, you won't then.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, defamation and lie.
There are so many people, like James O'Brien, who have deleted his old tweets.
Yes, I wanted to ask you about that.
Lots of people said some vile things.
Who were the worst?
Well, certainly Carol from The Guardian.
Carol Cudwallet, the catwoman.
So, you know, she would call me up screaming down the phone.
She called you up?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
During the three years, definitely.
Screaming down the phone.
What did she say?
Darren, Darren, you need to talk to me.
You need to talk to me.
I said, no, I don't.
And hung up the phone.
I never, ever spoke to her.
And I never, ever will.
I got stuck on a train with her last week.
What happened?
On the way back home from the northeast.
So as soon as the court case was over, I went back home.
Entire family so delighted.
I actually took bottles of champagne because they'd never had champagne before.
Really?
What did they think of it?
Well, they thought it was absolutely bloody lovely.
My nana turned her nose up at it like, but never mind.
And my mum told me this fantastic story, actually.
I'll go back to Carol, but she said she was in the queue for Asda when I'd called her and told her I'd won and she had to leave all of her shopping.
So she had no food for this party they'd organised.
So I had to go out and get everything.
I think that was a ploy.
A clever ploy.
So Carol would call me up screaming down and people were tweeting saying you should go over and you should just say to her do you want to apologise?
But I don't think that's going to get me anywhere to be honest because I think what conspiracy theorists like Carol have to deal with is that we have a leave cabinet now.
We are leaving the European Union.
I won my case.
Their conspiracy theories, their so-called whistleblower reports are now discredited.
And everything is going in the 17.4 million's favour.
And I think this wasn't just a victory for me.
This was a victory for the 17.4 million that have been told time and time again that their vote would be respected but there was a special caveat that said but only if the EU gives us permission and now we are finally starting to get some wins It started with my court case on that Friday,
then it's continued when Boris won, and now it's continuing with this leave cabinet, and people actually, I think, putting some real teeth into getting us out of this bureaucratic nightmare.
I've got two more questions I want to ask you, because tragically...
Bloody Toby Young is forcing me to go to do a podcast with him and then go and have lunch with Julia Hartley Brewer.
I love both of them.
This is why it's going to be shorter than it should be.
The special friend is going to be listening to this and say, why could you not spend longer with Darren?
We love Darren.
No, we do.
We love Darren.
But two questions.
First of all, Do you have a case against the people...
So, Caroline Codwalader, James O'Brien was very horrible to you, wasn't he?
What sort of things did he say?
Well, he was just...
I mean, basically just saying you don't have a right to have an opinion on X because you're a criminal.
I mean...
You can't discount, I think, the damage that that has to someone's reputation and, well, professional, I guess the probability that they're going to be employed.
The BBC turned around and said I was too controversial to have.
I used to do broadcast in house paper review quite a lot.
And then they turned around and said, I'm really sorry, we can't have you on until the investigation's over.
My phone's yet to ring and I won my case.
Funny that, isn't it?
And, okay, so there's James...
Yeah.
James O'Brien was bad.
Yeah.
Joe Moore...
Well, I mean, he did it all through the courts, didn't he?
And they've all been dismissed, so he's lost a lot of wealthy remainers, a lot of money, but...
Always a good thing.
Always a good thing.
But they've got loads.
Yeah, they've got shit-tons, exactly.
But defamation and things like...
I mean, if they continue saying these things, I think there's definitely an argument that I would win a defamation...
From your lips to God's ear.
Well, there we are.
Okay.
So my second question is, I'm kind of with you on this so far.
The Boris administration seems to be...
Do you think, though, here's my concern.
Do you think that what we're going to end up with is the withdrawal agreement without the backstop, which is basically still...
We're still fucked.
Sorry, I must have used that one.
It upsets the younger listeners.
But we're still...
We're subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.
We've still got loads of stuff.
Are you worried about that?
I... I actually can't see, I still can't see the withdrawal agreement pass in Parliament, even if he gets the EU to move on the backstop, which I don't think they actually will.
And do you reckon that's the plan?
Mm-hmm.
Do you reckon that's the deal?
So therefore, and then he's like, oops, we're leaving without a deal.
Wow, that would be so good for me.
It would, exactly.
And then we actually...
You know, people keep...
I read this absolutely farcical tweet that said we will...
It could be years under a no-deal scenario.
I thought, years under a no-deal scenario?
Do you mean years of independence?
Isn't that what we voted for?
I just thought, when will these people get it?
But, again, going back to my earlier optimism after three years of being negative and pessimistic...
I think we are finally starting to get some real wins.
And that, to me, is what's so exciting.
I agree.
Darren, I love you.
On behalf of the listeners, a special friend, we all love you.
And please, will you come back here on the podcast?
Absolutely, yeah.
And well done, mate.
Thank you very much.
Very, very good.
Cheers.
You're listening to The Delling Pod with me, James Delling Pod.
I'm sorry it's so short, but we'll have him back.
We'll have him back.
And my very special guest, Darren Grimes.
Hello?
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