Labour is still trying to "gaslight" the public over Russell Brand's 2015 interview with Ed Miliband, according to a new opinion piece, which argues that the party ignored a series of public red flags about Brand's behaviour before giving him a prominent political platform.
The article, written by Harvey Jones, challenges Education Secretary Lucy Powell's recent defence of the interview. Powell, who was vice-chair of Labour's 2015 election campaign, appeared on Sky News to defend the appearance, saying: "It was a long time ago, obviously and had I or Ed Miliband or anybody at the time had any sense at all that this was someone who was a sexual predator, who was involved in these sorts of crimes or any allegations around that that were known at the time." She then repeated that: "Those things unfortunately weren't known at the time."
Brand's Public History Before the Interview
The piece argues that while the allegations of rape and sexual assault that emerged in 2023 were not public knowledge in 2015, other details about Brand's behaviour were well documented. In September 2001, one day after more than 3,000 people were murdered in the 9/11 terror attacks, Brand turned up at MTV dressed as Osama bin Laden. He was sacked two days later.
In 2002, he was sacked by Xfm for reading pornography on air during a Sunday afternoon radio programme. In 2006, at the GQ awards, Brand falsely claimed to have slept with Rod Stewart's daughter Kimberly, later admitting the story was untrue when confronted by Stewart.
In his 2007 memoir, My Booky Wook, Brand wrote about compiling a "victims list" of "the women I've wronged as a result of my sexual addiction". The article suggests Powell could have read his own account of his sexual behaviour, which was in print eight years before the Miliband interview.
Sachsgate and Its Aftermath
The piece also highlights the Andrew Sachs scandal, or Sachsgate, from October 2008, when Brand and Jonathan Ross left lewd messages on the Fawlty Towers actor's answerphone. Brand sang: "I said something I didn't have oughta, like I had sex with your granddaughter," and continued: "But it was consensual and she wasn't menstrual." Ross shouted down the phone: "He f***ced your granddaughter!" and also said: "She was bent over the couch."
The BBC apologised, Brand resigned from his Radio 2 show, and the corporation was fined £150,000 by Ofcom. The regulator described the broadcast as gratuitously offensive, humiliating and demeaning. Sachsgate was a major national scandal, extensively reported at the time.
Other Incidents and the 2023 Conviction
Brand also made a grotesque joke about rape and murder in a recording made for Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast in 2013, saying: "I raped someone once. I killed her after, she'll never tell." The recording only attracted widespread attention when it resurfaced in 2023.
In 2014, Jordan Martin published The Devil and Miss Jones, describing an allegedly abusive relationship with Brand dating from 2007 and making allegations of sexual assault. Martin subsequently stood by her account, and Brand has never challenged the contents of the book.
The major investigations by The Times, The Sunday Times and Channel 4, which brought forward allegations from multiple women, were published in 2023. Brand has since been convicted of rape and three sexual assaults against four women, and sentenced to ten-and-a-half years in prison.
Questions Over Checks and Social Media
The article notes that one former Labour adviser, Ayesha Hazarika, now a Times Radio presenter, had a "horrible" experience with Brand in a bar in Edinburgh, where he behaved in a "sexually aggressive" way. She said: "If anyone had taken the time to ask me I would have told them that story," adding that nobody asked.
Powell also suggested this was all before the social media age, but the piece points out that Facebook was founded in 2004, YouTube in 2005 and Twitter in 2006, and that Sachsgate had been all over the BBC and the newspapers by 2015. The article concludes that Labour did not need to know about the alleged rapes and sexual assaults to know that Brand was a deeply questionable person to put on a political pedestal, but they did it anyway.
