Russell Brand turned a 2012 parliamentary discussion on drug addiction into what one MP called a “variety show” after being invited to appear by Labour politician Keith Vaz.
Brand, who had spoken publicly about his former heroin addiction, attended a meeting of the Home Affairs Committee to discuss his efforts to get clean. He arrived wearing a sleeveless vest and gold chains, and joked about having been arrested 12 times.
Several MPs laughed during the appearance, while Brand addressed some of them as “mate”. The comedian later clashed with Labour and Conservative members over his views and his frequent interruptions.
David Winnick, then a 78-year-old Labour MP, accused Brand of turning the hearing into entertainment. Brand replied: “You are providing a little bit of variety, though. You are making it more like Dad’s Army.”
The appearance proved embarrassing for Vaz, who chaired the committee and was accused of seeking publicity by inviting a highly polarising figure to speak before MPs.
Vaz, then the Labour MP for Leicester East and a former minister under Tony Blair, later resigned from the Commons at the 2019 general election. He had been suspended for six months after being caught offering to buy Class A drugs for male sex workers.
Brand’s drug policy campaigning
Brand continued to be welcomed by prominent Labour figures in discussions about addiction and drugs. In 2017, he appeared alongside Jonathan Ashworth, then the party’s shadow health secretary, at the Labour Party Conference.
Brand argued that drugs should be decriminalised, saying: “As long as drugs are criminalised, you can’t regulate them. As they continue to be criminalised they will – de facto – be stigmatised.”
He also said that some people in police cells and prisons were suffering from mental health problems and “shouldn’t be there in the first place”.
Ashworth spoke about growing up with an alcoholic father who died as a result of his illness. He said the number of people dying because of drug issues had risen by 48 per cent in 10 years, with drug misuse deaths at their highest level since 1983.
Brand’s relationship with Labour figures continued despite controversies surrounding his behaviour and public image. In 2008, he became embroiled in the “Sachsgate” scandal after leaving messages for Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs, boasting that he had slept with Sachs’s granddaughter.
In 2014, Andy Burnham, then Labour’s shadow health secretary, tweeted his support for Brand and praised him for using his celebrity status “to help others”.
Ed Miliband, Labour leader at the time, was also interviewed by Brand at the comedian’s penthouse before the 2015 general election.
Brand later switched his support to Jeremy Corbyn after Labour’s poor performance at that election. Writing ahead of the 2017 election, he described the prospect of voting for Corbyn as offering a change from what he called the “buffet of neo-liberal homogeneity” of 2015.
He praised Corbyn’s political record, writing: “Jeremy Corbyn has somehow been in politics for decades with his integrity perfectly preserved, like his much derided beard has functioned as hairy formaldehyde for his principles.”
Brand and Corbyn later appeared together at a protest outside Parliament in support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who was fighting extradition to the United States.
