Laurence Fox’s statement in full as he apologises to Ava Evans over GB News rant

Laurence Fox took to Twitter on Thursday night to address his 412,000 followers in a 15 minute video clip following his highly controversial comments about journalist Ava Evans during Dan Wootton’s GB News show earlier this week.

His statement in full is as follows:

“Hello, everyone. Strange couple of days it’s been. First of all, I have a few things I want to say. The first is to thank you so much for all of the messages of support that have come my way. I really do appreciate it. I’ve said, you know, when people come up to me and say, ‘You speak for the silent majority’ and all of that, and then I say, ‘Well, what’s the point of speaking for the silent majority it remains silent’, but, you know, we’re all weak.

“Anyway, it’s been a tricky couple of days, but I have bought a lot of it on myself and I wanted to say a few things.

“First of all, I don’t think there’s any bonus in this modern climate that we have of turning around and saying to people to be unforgiving and unhumbled, even though we’re faced with a very, very powerful cancel mob. I’m now on my second cancellation so as a father, raising two children, and starting again is very, very worrying.

“But, listen, what happened. So I suppose I think I’m gonna provide a bit of context and then we’ll get to what I want to say. Ava was talking to Geoff Norcott, Geoff Norcott was talking about male suicide on Politics Live, I think it was.

“I felt that he was just demeaned every time he tried to raise it, you know. As somebody who knows men that have killed themselves and suicide being the biggest killer of men under 50, you would think that it was a big deal. It should be a big deal. And there was one moment where Ava said, ‘I just feel it’s been made into a cultural issue’, or something similar, and I thought that was really reprehensible because you know, male suicide is dreadful and it shouldn’t be demeaned or ripped apart.

“Men do store up their feelings and put on a brave face often and suddenly from nowhere, when you don’t expect it, they end up taking their own lives, and that’s unbelievably tragic and I’ve seen it more than once. So I took that very personally, which is a problem sometimes for me because I’m a very emotional person.

“That was then followed up by seeing a few other clips of Ava saying, you know that she wanted to see men terrified and frightened. And I just sensed this very strong dislike of men in general which brewed in me for a couple of days, which is never good. You should not react off the cuff and you should allow measure into your tone.

“The overwhelming majority of men, 99 percent of men are good, decent and honest people and they love their partners and they support them and they encourage them in everything.

“You see it in families across the country every single day, happily working together and it’s only these extremes that are dragged out and I think that, you know, Ava shouldn’t paint all men with one brush, in the same way as I shouldn’t paint all women with one brush. So I was being particular about a certain ideologically driven type of woman.

“I’m saying I don’t think it makes women happy to hate men. I don’t think it makes society happy for women to hate men in the way that she so often does. And there’s been an awful lot of talk of misogyny and very little of misandry.

“Anyway, then comes whichever night it was Monday night to go on with Dan. They said they wanted to do this story, so I was like, ‘Okay’, and they asked me what I was gonna say and I told him exactly what I was gonna say. And I think people found it amusing if I’m honest. They knew what I was gonna say. I think I even did mention to the producer the use of the word “shag” which I think is the world’s worst word, but we’ll get on to that.

“Anyway, I’m on with Dan, the point I should have made if it wasn’t 9.45 at night and you know in that sort of banter-ish type way, was to say that men who are men men, you know who are who are traditionally stoic men, should probably avoid women who don’t like them very much and who dismiss male suicide and who tweet things like, ‘I want to be socially distanced from men’ and ‘I will continue to wear a mask because of the greatest threat of all men’.

“And I just felt the misandry of that was so much so if I was going to be sensible and I can replay it I would say any self-respecting man in 2023 would probably be well advised to avoid a woman who possessed that worldview because she would probably cause him nothing but harm.

“But what I did say was, you know, ‘I wouldn’t shag that’ and all that sort of stuff, which is not right and it’s demeaning to her, to Ava, so I’m sorry for demeaning you in that way however angry I am with you still for doing that. And it demeans me because it’s not representative of who I am.

“And also I’d like to add that I’m not saying any of this stuff because I know I’m gonna get sacked tomorrow, I’m saying this stuff to clear my own conscience.

“I do think that what’s happened is that a narrative has been spun and a scapegoat has been found, which is me, and I don’t think that that’s been particularly fair.

“So we’re living in a world which is getting progressively more divided and my beliefs and all the things that I care about in terms of stuff like free speech, are a way of getting people to talk to each other from across different political lines and different cultural lines and stuff like that. And I’m often successful actually, I have some really good relationships with people who disagree with me, and I think that’s really good.

“I would like to say to GB News, I think, I’d like to add some context to why I posted Dan Wootton’s, I reposted it, Dan, was, as you probably know, Dan’s been in a lot of hot water after a sort of Byline Times attack on him.

“I provided Dan with probably several weeks of daily moral support and encouragement and the full access to free legal services, access to our lawyers and stuff like that.

“And also, we organised a crowd funder. We did all this and worked really hard, we put everything aside and we did that. I said to Dan, quite clearly I said, if they sack you without any, you know, actual police involvement, or just on the back of some complaints which are unfounded and your presumption of innocence isn’t maintained along with the right to express free speech, then I will walk out in solidarity with you.

“So when I read his response, throwing me under the bus, which has been quite the standard feature from GB News presenters, I decided that it was important that people know the context of that because one shouldn’t behave in that way, I don’t do this loyalty, and I don’t do cowardice.

“It’s just not what I do. And I believe 100 percent in integrity, which is why I’m stumbling through this sort of apology to you.

“One of the things that we are looking at now is that GB News have opened themselves up for complete destruction, as far as I can tell, because they branded themselves as the home of free speech.

“Now, if you’re the home of free speech, then they want they could easily have done is say, ‘We think what Laurence said was appalling and reprehensible, but he’s got the right to say it, it is his opinion. Could he have expressed it better? Yes’, and, as I’ve said in this conversation with you, I could have expressed it better and I should have expressed it better.

“But to see GB news do that, to cancel, what I’m 99.999 percent sure they are going to do is sack us both tomorrow, or certainly I think they’ll sack me. They’re opening themselves up to that mob, that cancellation mob which was very well organised and used by as you can see the frightening part of this is the story has been decided ‘I’m evil’, I’ve been there before, and every single member of every single political party are parroting the same line which is more regulation, more suppression of free speech.

“So GB News had one opportunity to stand up and defend free speech, which they haven’t done. So I think they now are actually the home of cancel culture, and they’re probably more at risk of cancel culture than any other channel, which is so ironic seeing as they dress themselves up as the home of free speech.

“The other thing that was interesting is you know, is Gary Lineker made virtue points about refugees and all of this sort of stuff. He got seven days suspension and everyone walked out with him.

“And sometimes I wonder to myself why we’re losing this cultural war, which it is a cultural war. We’re fighting against people who want to dismantle our culture entirely. They want to dismantle our history. They want to dismantle our education. They want anyone who happens to be born with white skin or celebrating British values, they want them to be demonised and hated and that is their mission.

“So to me, it is a war and why they’re winning is because people come out in solidarity with them. And what we found at GB News, which is not surprising to me because I’ve worked in showbusiness in 25 years, is someone was just so happy to get in the seat before it was even cool, while it was still warm.

“Look, I’m rambling, but I wanted to say that I regret the use of my language. I don’t think it honours me and I don’t think it honours my view of women.

“I’m not misogynist on any level. So sex allegations or whatever won’t be coming my way. I honour love and respect women and even those that I don’t agree with, and I profoundly disagree with Ava and the growing misandry in this world and the idea that you know, the original idea of feminism was equality, which is a noble, noble, noble goal, you know, women have been suppressed.

“But this wave of feminism, whichever one we’re on, fourth? It’s not about equality or authority over men in the same way as BLM is not really about black people struggling in some way, It’s about revenge and money, obviously. And the MeToo movement was a witch hunt for people as well in lots of ways.

“So valuable movements like the underreporting of female sexual assault, which everyone is aware of and should be concerned about, is done no favours by a woman standing up and saying, I want men to be terrified and I want them to be frightened.

“I’ve got two young boys, young men now, who are going to go out into a world and God knows what relationships are going to be like in that world.

“There’s been lots of good progress with stuff like consent, and that is very, very important. But I fear for my boys, so I don’t like it when I hear someone saying that. I don’t like anti-male sentiment.

“Society functions when you have strong men and strong women. As I said, in my statement, I said the only bit that everyone misses out is I said that we need a society full of strong women with great ideas. But we don’t need a society full of victims who want to take revenge on men because what happens then is you get feminization of masculinity you know, this idea of toxic masculinity but there is no toxic femininity.

“There is, all human beings can be toxic. It doesn’t depend on your sex. And actually, to get us out of this problem, where we’ve got a lot of weak men, we do need some strong men and in my own cack-handed way, I was trying to make the point that any self-respecting man should run a mile from Ava which I actually, with all due respect, I standby. I think what I’m trying to say is I could have expressed it in a better way.

“But so yeah, here we are. Takeaway points are to provide you the context of what happened, to express my apology to Ava for the language I used, whilst I maintain the sentiment that I possess still, I do think she’s, it’s a horrible thing.”