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Julia Hartley-Brewer | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1968-05-02)2 May 1968 (age 56) Birmingham, England |
| Education | Magdalen College, Oxford Cardiff University |
| Occupation(s) | Radio presenter,journalist,columnist |
| Years active | 1990s–present |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 1 |
Julia Hartley-Brewer (born 2 May 1968) is an English political journalist, newspaper columnist and radio presenter. She currently hosts a radio show onTalkradio simulcast onTalk calledJulia Hartley-Brewer on weekdays from 10am.
Julia Hartley-Brewer is the daughter of Michael John Hartley-Brewer, who unsuccessfully stood as theLabour Party's candidate inSelly Oak in the1970 general election, andgeneral practitioner[1] Valerie Forbes Hartley-Brewer.[2] Her parents divorced, and her mother trained as a GP while bringing up two children.[1]
Hartley-Brewer was educated at the Oldfield Girls' Comprehensive School inBath. Later, Hartley-Brewer studied at Woodhouse Sixth Form College inFinchley, North London. She gained a degree inphilosophy, politics and economics atMagdalen College, Oxford[3][4] in 1988.[5]
She later studied for adiploma injournalism atCardiff University's School of Journalism.[citation needed]
Hartley-Brewer began her career in journalism at theEast London Advertiser inBethnal Green, east London.[6] Later, she was employed as a news reporter and political correspondent for the LondonEvening Standard and then joinedThe Guardian, staying at the latter until September 2000.[7] She then moved to theSunday Express as political correspondent, then political editor from 2001 until 2007[citation needed] and then assistant editor (politics).[4] She left theSunday Express in February 2011.[citation needed]
In 2006, she presented and narrated twopolitical documentaries for the television channelsBBC Two andBBC Four about the history ofBritish Deputy Prime Ministers, calledEvery Prime Minister Needs a Willie, and the history of theLeader of the Opposition inThe Worst Job in Politics.[8]
She was anLBC presenter from February 2011, until she left in December 2014 to be replaced byShelagh Fogarty.[9]
Hartley-Brewer broadcast onTalkradio, a radio station owned by Rupert Murdoch'sNews Corp. She presented the mid-morning weekday show from March 2016 until 15 January 2018, when she moved to host the weekday breakfast show from 6.30am to 10am.[10]
In September 2019,The Julia Hartley-Brewer Show was launched onYouTube under the Talkradio brand; each programme is a one-to-one interview with a guest. The show became a daily simulcast as part of the daily schedule of TalkTV that began broadcasting in April 2022.[citation needed]
She has written opinion articles and columns for publications such asThe Daily Telegraph,[11]The Mail on Sunday, andThe Spectator about politics and current affairs.[citation needed]
She has appeared as a panellist on the comedy quiz showHave I Got News for You ten times, as well as being a regular panellist onBBC One'sQuestion Time[6] andRadio 4'sAny Questions. She is a regular pundit and commentator on TV and radio, including forSky News, BBC One'sThe One Show,This Morning on ITV,BBC Radio 5 Live andBBC Radio 4'sToday andPM programmes.[citation needed]
She was a contestant onPointless Celebrities in October 2014, winning the prize for her chosen charity.[12]
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Hartley-Brewer was a long-standing supporter ofBrexit during the campaign in 2016.[13] On 29 March 2019, Hartley-Brewer spoke at theLeave Means Leave rally inParliament Square, London.[14]
She says she is anatheist.[15] In 2010, she described herself as a "staunch and long-standingrepublican".[16] She is an honorary associate of theNational Secular Society.[17]
Discussing theclimate crisis, she said[when?] that those who believe in an imminent climate catastrophe are "part of a doomsday cult," and describedExtinction Rebellion as "a sort of quasi-religious death cult." She also stated thatclimate models "so far have failed to predict anything correctly" and that the science of climate change is "an as-yet unproven theory" and therefore open to challenge, "which is standard practice inscience."[18][better source needed]
At the Oxford University PPE Society on 20 November 2018, Hartley-Brewer gave a talk on "Political Correctness and Free Speech", in which she argued thatpolitical correctness damaged the ability to freely express political views.[19]
Hartley-Brewer has been referred to as "right-wing" by Nick Duffy writing forPinkNews. Duffy reported that on 30 November 2018 Hartley-Brewer threatened to remove a guest from the Talkradio studio where she works as a presenter during a discussion on trans issues because the guest used the term "cis."[20] A later article in 2021 forPinkNews by Lily Wakefield referred to Hartley-Brewer as having "openly voiced her anti-trans views" in reference to the article by Duffy.[21]
TheRoyal College of General Practitioners invited her to speak in an "NHS Question Time" panel debate at its annual conference in 2019 but withdrew the invitation after over 700 GPs signed a petition complaining that her views were not conducive to the work they were doing to promote inclusivity within the profession and among patients.[22] One of such views involved a deleted Tweet from 2016, in which Hartley-Brewer said "Powell wasn't a racist". On Enoch Powell, she said "I'm not defending Powell, I just don't see anything in theRivers speech that he got wrong.".[23]
In June 2016, Hartley-Brewer saidOwen Jones had "more in common withISIS than he thinks" onSky News after Jones walked out of an interview on the news channel following hostMark Longhurst's refusal to refer to theOrlando nightclub shooting as an assault onLGBT people. Hartley-Brewer also said, "neither the Sky presenter Mark Longhurst nor I said anything that was offensive, wrong or bigoted in any way" and that she would not apologise to Jones. By lunchtime of the following day of the interview and the comments by Hartley-Brewer,Ofcom had received nearly 60 complaints about the programme from viewers who said both Hartley-Brewer and Longhurst were dismissive of Jones's argument that the attack was one on the LGBT community.[11]
In October 2017, Hartley-Brewer alleged that the then Defence Secretary,Sir Michael Fallon, had repeatedly touched her knee throughout a dinner in 2002; the allegation contributed to his eventual resignation.[24][25]
On 12 August 2018, she sent a tweet containing a photo of the aftermath of the 1998Omagh bombing with text saying thatJeremy Corbyn had paid tribute to the victims of the bombing, "including the Real IRA bombers who may have snagged a nail while planting the explosives".[26][27] The tweet was criticised as insensitive by Michael Gallagher, whose son Aidan was killed by the bomb.[26][27] He said that while he wouldn't have "much faith" in Corbyn, her tweet was "poorly timed".[26][27] WriterLisa McGee and journalist David Blevins criticised the use of the photo.[26][27] She defended her tweet as satire.[26][27]
In October 2019,Jolyon Maugham accused Hartley-Brewer of revealing his home address at a time when he was receivingdeath threats.[28] Hartley-Brewer defended herself by saying Maugham's address was already easily available online and that he had previously revealed it himself in published interviews.[28]
In April 2021,Ofcom received over 200 complaints accusing Hartley-Brewer of trivialising racism following a TV appearance onThis Morning in which Hartley-Brewer commented on a family portrait ofQueen Elizabeth II andPrince Philip taken in 2018, posing with seven oftheir great-grandchildren, saying: "I wonder ifMeghan has managed to take offence to this photograph that doesn't include her son. Well she probably thinks it's a racist photograph, taken before her son was even conceived". (Prince Archie, the son of Meghan andPrince Harry, was born in 2019).[29][needs update]
In December 2022, Hartley-Brewer referred to environmental activistGreta Thunberg's autism in a tweet, following Thunberg's criticism of internet personalityAndrew Tate. The tweet was posted again without mentioning autism.[30] Hartley-Brewer also stated in both the original and re-posted tweet that she would "choose Andrew Tate's life *every single time*" over Thunberg's.[31] This was widely commented on online when, a day after the tweet, Tate was arrested on suspicion ofhuman trafficking, rape, and forming an organised crime group.[32][33]
On 4 January 2024, during an interview withDr. Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian politician, Hartley was accused of shouting over the top of her guest and repeatedly interrupting Barghouti. She also stated, "Maybe you're not used to women talking, I don't know, but I'd like to finish the sentence!"[34] In response,Ofcom received 17,366 complaints about Hartley's conduct during her show, making it the most complained-about United Kingdom programme in 2024.[35]
On 14 April 2024, in the wake of the2024 Bondi Junction stabbings inSydney, Australia, before the suspect had been identified, Hartley-Brewer tweeted "Another day. Another terror attack by another Islamic terrorist". The press later condemned this and other misinformation that had been spread about the attacker, and she deleted her tweet after it had been viewed more than nine million times. The attacker Joel Cauchi was not Muslim.[36][37][38]
Hartley-Brewer is on the advisory council of theFree Speech Union.[39]
Hartley-Brewer married Rob Walton in 2006.[40][41] They have one daughter.[42]
The large panel required a capable chair, and we were lucky enough to have Julia Hartley-Brewer (1988), columnist and Assistant editor (Politics) of the Sunday Express, to keep order with an iron fist in a velvet glove