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09th May 2021

Laurence Fox loses £10,000 deposit after securing less than 2% of London mayoral election votes

Laurence Fox has lost his £10,000 deposit after securing less than two per cent of the vote in the London mayoral elections

Claudia McInerney

The “anti-woke” campaigner lost his deposit after his poor performance in the London mayoral elections

Laurence Fox, the former actor and “anti-woke” campaigner, has lost his £10,000 deposit after securing less than two per cent of votes in the London mayoral elections.

Fox, who set up the Reclaim Party and publicly campaigned to scrap the coronavirus lockdown, gained a total of 47,634 votes in this week’s mayoral election and finished in sixth place.

The Reclaim Party candidate lost his large deposit given to London Elects due to the low number of ballot papers he won.

Party candidates must gain at least 5 per cent of first choice votes to keep their £10,000 deposit.

However, Fox is not the only candidate to fail to fulfil the requirements to get the deposit back.

The satirical political candidate Count Binface lost his deposit, as well as the Liberal Democrat’s Luisa Porritt, Piers Corbyn, Mandu Reid, Niko Omilana and Peter Gammons.

The funds will be retained by London Elects, the Greater London Authority team who organise the mayoral elections,
and used to offset the costs needed to run elections in the future.

Labour party candidate Sadiq Khan, who comfortably won his second term as London’s mayor, secured just over 55 per cent of the votes in the second counting round.

On Twitter, the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan thanked Londoners for their support following the election result.

He said: “Thank you London. It’s the absolute honour of my life to serve the city I love for another three years.

“I’ll leave no stone unturned to get our city back on its feet.

“A brighter future is possible, and we’ll deliver it together.”