Tom Penn and Eve Leigh, the next-door Remainer neighbours of Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds who recorded their late-night row, managed to spark a lively debate about the balance between public interest and privacy when they passed the recording on to the Guardian shortly after the incident last weekend.
It appears though that the Brexit party’s Claire Fox is squarely in camp Boris when it comes to the couple’s right to argue in their own flat. Speaking at Forest’s 40th Anniversary Gala Dinner, the Brexit party MEP and Moral Maze panelist hit out at their neighbours’ decision to pass the recording on to the newspaper. In her speech, Fox said that the incident was one of many reasons the world was going ‘bloody mad’, and argued that it was part of a ‘political campaign’ against the former Foreign Secretary:
‘We live in a world where your next-door neighbour, in the guise of looking out for women’s welfare, takes your argument and sends the altercation to a newspaper, as part of an apparently legitimate political campaign.’
Fox also gave the example of teachers being disciplined for supporting the Brexit party, and Paul Embery being barred from the Fire Brigades Union after speaking at a Leave Means Leave rally, as other reasons the world had gone mad, before arguing that:
‘I don’t care what side of the political divide you’re on, that is not good for a free society, and we must rebel and rise against this demonisation and this attempt to divide us.
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