I was slow-killing myself... It was certainly an addiction at the end, a dependency... I was thinking of [drinking] at any given time of the day." Politics In August 2014, Webb was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue. Webb was a staunch supporter of the Labour Party, and joined the party in 2013, in response to Russell Brand's interview on Newsnight, in which he suggested people should not vote as a form of protest. By November 2015, he announced on Twitter that he was leaving the Labour Party, citing his lack of confidence in the party's leader, Jeremy Corbyn. He also expressed his disapproval at the appointment of Guardian journalist Seumas Milne as Labour's press secretary. He was quoted as saying that paying his party subscription with Milne in post made him "feel sick". However, in May 2017, Webb endorsed the Labour Party in the 2017 UK general election. In December 2018, Webb tweeted his support of an article by Janice Turner in which she criticised Mermaids – a charity which supports transgender children and their families – that had sought (and was eventually awarded) a £500,000 UK National Lottery grant. He also identified himself as a gender-critical feminist, but claimed to oppose transphobia. He stood by the comments in a 2020 interview with The Sunday Times. In a 2021 interview with Jesse Thorn on the NPR show Bullseye, Webb said that his criticism of Mermaids should not be confused with an opposition to supporting transgender children, and that the debate around gender-nonconforming children had become overheated. When asked about what his opposition to Mermaids was he declined to elaborate further, stating he could no longer remember the specifics. Webb has been criticised by some LGBT news outlets, charities and activists for this stance. Filmography Film Television Bibliography Non-fiction How Not to Be a Boy (Canongate Books, 2017) Fiction Come Again (Canongate Books, 2020) Other work Webb has appeared on a number of podcasts including The QuaranTea Break Podcast with Simon Ward and The Two Shot Podcast. References External links 1972 births Living people 20th-century English male actors 21st-century English male actors 20th-century English writers 21st-century English writers Alumni of Robinson College, Cambridge Apple Inc. advertising Bisexual male actors Comedians from Lincolnshire