GB News bids Grimes goodbye

There’s certainly reason to think there might be a story behind Grimes’ departure, not least through his recent viral social posts. On February 24, Grimes posted a black-and-white photo of women chatting at the gates of their back gardens, captioned: “Back then we didn’t have much. Life was hard, work was dangerous and times were tough. But my God at least we had each other — the country was united. In my lifetime that has been thoroughly lost.”

This caused confusion for several reasons, not least because Darren Grimes was born in 1993, is 31, and seemed to be hearkening back to the kind of boomer nostalgia that ended decades before his arrival on earth. But the particular picture he’d chosen didn’t help either. Not only did it date back to 1984 – nine years before his birth – but it was taken during the miners’ strike. Should Grimes ever trouble himself with a textbook, he might learn that the country was not quite as “united” as he imagines.

Worse was to follow. Three days later, Grimes posted: “I walk around my home. Filled with Deliveroo drivers speaking in a foreign tongue, public transport full of foreign people and a high street populated by foreign beggars, and I wonder what on earth our ancestors died for?”

In a way, Grimes was lucky that his bizarre turn of phrase – which made it sound like he keeps a menagerie of kidnapped Deliveroo drivers in his basement – distracted from the blatant xenophobia in which he was engaged on the post, though it was still not missed.

Either post would enough to get on-air talent in trouble in any serious news network, but at GB News Grimes might have expected then to lead to promotion. In reality, his departure is said to be genuinely voluntary, but earlier than he expected. Despite loudly talking about his plans to set up as an independent on set, Grimes had expected to be allowed more time on air while he got ready – but bosses reportedly had a different idea.

He has never, alas, been known as a mastermind.