Darren Grimes

Darren Grimes (born 22 July 1993) is a right-wing British political commentator and activist.

Grimes grew up in a single-parent household in Consett, County Durham, England. He is openly gay. He studied fashion and business studies at the University of Brighton.

While at university, Grimes was an activist for the Liberal Democrats, and worked for then-MP Norman Lamb's unsuccessful 2015 party leadership campaign. The following year he founded the pro-Brexit group BeLeave aimed at younger voters during the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum campaign.

Grimes later dropped out of university and between 2016 and 2018, he worked as a deputy editor for the political website BrexitCentral, founded by Matthew Elliott, the former Vote Leave chief executive. In 2018 he became the digital manager for the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA).

In May 2020, he launched Reasoned UK, a platform for those "standing against the tide" who "hide [their] political views for fear of being called homophobic, a TERF, [or] racist". Some criticised perceived transphobia voiced by Grimes during the launch.

In July 2020, an interview with the historian David Starkey that Grimes published on his video platform sparked significant controversy. The historian remarked that "Slavery was not genocide, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many damn blacks in Africa or in Britain, would there?" This prompted backlash, including condemnation by former Chancellor of the Exchequer Sajid Javid. Starkey subsequently resigned from his fellowship at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, was fired by Canterbury Christ Church University, and was dropped by current and former publishers. Following the airing of his interview with Starkey, Grimes blamed his inexperience at interviewing for his failure to pick up on and challenge Starkey's comments.

In 2018, Grimes was fined £20,000 by the Electoral Commission after it determined that there was evidence that BeLeave had spent more than £675,000 with the Canadian political consultancy firm AggregateIQ in coordination with the official Brexit campaign organisation Vote Leave in distribution targeted social media advertisements. The Commission argued that these actions violated electoral spending rules, and that Grimes and Vote Leave official David Alan Halsall had made false declarations relating to the spending. Vote Leave's fine was upheld on appeal, but Grimes' was overturned. Subsequently, in May 2020, the Metropolitan Police ended its investigation into Grimes and Halsall.