Julia Hartley-Brewer

Julia Hartley-Brewer (born 2 May 1968) is a right-wing English political journalist, newspaper columnist and radio presenter. She hosts the midmorning show on Talk called Talk. Nation.

Early life and education

Hartley-Brewer is the daughter of Michael Hartley-Brewer, who unsuccessfully stood as the Labour Party's candidate in Selly Oak in the 1970 general election as well as in Dudley West in the 1979 general election, and general practitioner Valerie Forbes Hartley-Brewer. Her parents divorced, and her mother trained as a GP while bringing up two children. in 1988.

Career

Hartley-Brewer began her career in journalism at the East London Advertiser in Bethnal Green, east London. Later, she was employed as a news reporter and political correspondent for the London Evening Standard and then joined The Guardian, staying at the latter until September 2000. She then moved to the Sunday Express as political correspondent, then political editor from 2001 until 2007 and then assistant editor (politics).

She was an LBC presenter from February 2011, until she left in December 2014 to be replaced by Shelagh Fogarty.

Hartley-Brewer broadcast on Talkradio, a radio station owned by Rupert Murdoch's News 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.

She has written opinion articles and columns for The Daily Telegraph.

Broadcast guest appearances

She has appeared as a panellist on the comedy quiz show Have I Got News for You ten times, as well as being a regular panellist on BBC One's Question Time.

Views and incidents

Hartley-Brewer was a long-standing supporter of Brexit during the campaign in 2016. On 29 March 2019, Hartley-Brewer spoke at the Leave Means Leave rally in Parliament Square, London.

She is an atheist. In 2010, she described herself as a "staunch and long-standing republican". She is an honorary associate of the National Secular Society.

In 2015, after Pope Francis issued the encyclical Laudato Si, calling for 'swift and unified global action' on environmental degradation and global warming, Hartley-Brewer wrote an article for The Daily Telegraph stating: "What the head of an anti-science body like the Catholic Church says about climate change is about as relevant as Kim Kardashian on the eurozone."

In June 2016, Hartley-Brewer said Owen Jones had "more in common with ISIS than he thinks" on Sky News after Jones walked out of an interview on the news channel following host Mark Longhurst's refusal to refer to the Orlando nightclub shooting as an assault on LGBT 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.

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 that political correctness damaged the ability to freely express political views.

Hartley-Brewer has been referred to as "right-wing" by Nick Duffy writing for PinkNews. 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." A later article in 2021 for PinkNews by Lily Wakefield referred to Hartley-Brewer as having "openly voiced her anti-trans views" in reference to the article by Duffy.

On 12 August 2018, she sent a tweet containing a photo of the aftermath of the 1998 Omagh bombing with text saying that Jeremy 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". The tweet was criticised as insensitive by Michael Gallagher, whose son Aidan was killed by the bomb. 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 the Rivers speech that he got wrong."

In October 2019, Jolyon Maugham accused Hartley-Brewer of revealing his home address at a time when he was receiving death threats. 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.

In December 2022, Hartley-Brewer referred to environmental activist Greta Thunberg's autism in a tweet, following Thunberg's criticism of internet personality Andrew Tate. The tweet was posted again without mentioning autism. 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. This was mocked online when, a day after the tweet, Tate was arrested on suspicion of human trafficking, rape, and forming an organised crime group.

On 4 January 2024, during an interview with Dr. 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!" 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.

On 14 April 2024, in the wake of the 2024 Bondi Junction stabbings in Sydney, 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 perpetrator, Joel Cauchi, was not Muslim.

Hartley-Brewer is on the advisory council of the Free Speech Union.

Personal life

Hartley-Brewer married Rob Walton in 2006. They have one daughter.

References

External links

Julia Hartley-Brewer, TalkTV, YouTube