Andrew Bridgen, the MP who was kicked out of the Conservative Party after calling for a halt to the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, has joined Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party.
At a press conference in London on Wednesday, Fox confirmed that Bridgen will stand for Reclaim in 2024 to take on “wokery” and “groupthink.”
Bridgen also revealed that he is suing former health minister Matt Hancock over accusations of antisemitism.
“I’m afraid to say that a pernicious, very stupid, groupthink dominates a society where it’s so much easier and safer to go along with the narrative. So it is a very rare person in public life who will speak out about COVID-19 vaccines. One of the few very brave few is Andrew Bridgen,” said Fox, announcing the party’s first representative.
“And I am completely confident that Andrew Bridgen will be vindicated when the virology textbooks of the future are written. Andrew will be on the right side of history,” added Fox.
Bridgen highlighted the case of Dr. Stephen Wright, potentially the first person in the UK to have died from the AstraZeneca vaccine.
“Unfortunately, many of my parliamentary colleagues are reluctant to publicly confront the lessons we should have learned over the last few years,” said Bridgen.
“It’s easier for them to forgive and forget, move on. Let bygones be bygones. Not think too much about it. I really don’t know how they justify this willful blindness. Well, as far as they’re concerned, it’s over,” he added.
“From my parliamentary colleagues across the chamber, that the top of the parties the rot is complete, to even broach the subject of vaccine harms, or excess deaths is seen as anathema,” said Bridgen.
When asked if he would do a by-election, Bridgen said that he believed that there will be a general election this autumn.
“I wouldn’t want to put my constituents through the rigours of having two general elections in less than 12 months,” he added.
On Reclaim’s strategy, Fox said that he is not looking to stand in 650 seats.
Fox, an actor, made headlines in September 2020 when he announced he was founding the Reclaim Party, which he said in a statement was born out of a “desperate need of a new political movement which promises to make our future a shared endeavour not a divisive one.”
“We’re looking to find problematic Tories, particularly old Labour, and understand they’re struggling with principles where wokery has taken off terribly and cancel culture exists,” said Fox.
Fox noted that Reclaim is “now the same size as the Green Party” which also has one MP, Caroline Lucas, in Parliament.
Bridgen also said that he has filed a claim for defamation against Hancock.
“I have submitted a defamation claim to the Royal Court of Justice against one Matthew Hancock MP,” he said.
“The basis of my claim is that Mr. Hancock’s accusation of anti-Semitism against me is a false slur to deliberately try and shut down valid concerns raised by me on behalf of my constituents and thousands of others around the world about the safety and efficacy of experimental COVID-19 injections,” he added.
Bridgen lost the party whip, meaning he was sitting in the Commons as an independent, over comments in March when he posted an article on Twitter saying, “As one consultant cardiologist said to me, this is the biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust.”
Bridgen also made a claim in a parliamentary debate in December, in which he called for an “immediate” suspension of the use of mRNA vaccines.
He claimed that a person within a “prominent leadership role” in the British Heart Foundation had sent non-disclosure agreements to researchers to prevent data on potential harms from being made public.
In response, the British Heart Foundation released a statement that said it “did not recognise these claims” and that it strongly refuted “all allegations made about colleagues in senior leadership roles” within the organisation.
In the parliamentary debate on vaccine harms, Bridgen said that there is a “key psychological barrier that has prevented these facts from being acknowledged by policymakers and taken up by the UK mainstream media.”
“That psychological phenomenon is wilful blindness. It is when human beings—including, in this case, institutions—turn a blind eye to the truth in order to feel safe, reduce anxiety, avoid conflict, and protect their prestige and reputations,” he added.
In April, MPs debated whether the government should hold a referendum on the UK’s involvement in the World Health Organisation pandemic treaty.
Bridgen said that he was “really worried whether colleagues have actually read the treaty.”
“Because clearly when we take out the words ‘not binding’ through an amendment, it becomes binding. These are binding treaties: if we do nothing, they are binding, legally binding across all the nations,” he said.
The Epoch Times contacted Matt Hancock for comment.