The political courtship of Russell Brand by senior Labour figures has come under renewed scrutiny after the comedian was found guilty of rape and three sexual assaults.
Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband were among those who embraced Brand’s anti-establishment image, despite a history of controversial behaviour that included the 2008 “Sachsgate” scandal and admissions about his treatment of women in his memoir.
Mr Burnham, then Labour’s shadow health secretary, publicly defended Brand in 2014. He tweeted that it was “Depressing to see media mission to discredit someone who stops playing their game and uses celebrity to help others. Keep going @rustyrockets”.
He also praised an article Brand wrote for The Guardian about Margaret Thatcher, describing it in 2013 as the “best thing ever written by a West Ham fan”. The piece had caused an outcry and remained on the newspaper’s website.
Labour sources said on Thursday night that Mr Burnham’s comments had been made more than a decade before Brand’s conviction.
Ed Miliband’s 2015 interview with Russell Brand
Mr Miliband, then Labour leader, went further during the 2015 general election campaign by agreeing to be interviewed by Brand at the comedian’s £2 million London penthouse.
The interview was arranged by Lucy Powell, Mr Miliband’s chief of staff at the time and now Education Secretary, nine days before polling day. Brand was presenting himself as an anti-capitalist revolutionary, despite his wealthy lifestyle.
He later endorsed Labour and urged people to vote for the party, which went on to record its worst election result since 1987.
Brand was already a highly controversial figure. He had been charged with, but not convicted of, indecent exposure early in his career, dressed as Osama bin Laden the day after the September 11 attacks and was dismissed for reading pornography live on the radio.
He had also been condemned by then-prime minister Gordon Brown over “Sachsgate”, when he left BBC Radio 2 voicemails for Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs boasting that he had slept with Sachs’s granddaughter.
Brand’s 2007 memoir, My Booky Wook, had also been serialised in The Guardian. In it, he described writing a “victims list” of women he had “wronged as a result of my sexual addiction”.
Mr Miliband defended the decision at the time, saying: “People criticise Russell Brand, and I don’t agree with his message, but what he’s saying, a number of people are thinking, which is that politics doesn’t feel like it speaks to them.”
Brand said the appearance showed that Mr Miliband understood “the way the media works now” and “the way that the country feels at the moment”. He urged viewers to vote Labour, despite having previously said he had never voted.
Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former director of communications, also backed the decision, saying: “I, for one, was glad when I heard Ed Miliband had said yes… what Russell Brand says and does matters more than what The Sun, the Mail, The Telegraph, the Star and the Express are going to say on election day.”
Mr Miliband has since said that, had he known then what he knows now, he “wouldn’t have done that interview, and I regret doing it”. His spokesman declined to comment.
Other Labour figures who backed Brand
The Guardian devoted several articles to the interview, asking whether Brand could win the election for Labour. Its columnist Owen Jones wrote that Mr Miliband’s best route to young voters was Russell Brand and argued that the Labour leader should be “commended for his bravery”.
Mr Jones acknowledged that Brand had “acknowledged his own problematic attitude towards women”, but also wrote: “Russell Brand matters.”
Other Labour figures also expressed support. Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Bryant wrote in 2013 that Brand had “shone with intelligence on TV last night”, while former minister Jess Phillips posted: “Tried to join @rustyrockets revolution, am waiting to hear.”
Mr Burnham also defended Brand after The Sun accused him of hypocrisy over his housing arrangements. The newspaper claimed he was renting a luxury London property through a British Virgin Islands-registered company while criticising tax avoidance. Brand threatened to sue but did not do so.
Former Conservative Cabinet minister Gavin Williamson said: “Sachsgate was no secret. Everyone knew who Russell Brand was, yet Labour’s great and good queued up to be photographed with him.”
Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said Brand had spoken “arrant nonsense”, adding that too many people had sought publicity by associating themselves with his “notorious attitudes and extreme comments” while ignoring commentary about his “erratic and abusive behaviour”.
