Who is Winston Marshall? Mumford & Sons' ex-banjo player

The Herald Scotland

04-05-2025

That kind of wokery won't fly in the brave new age of MAGA, but perhaps some alterations can be made should Donald Trump act on the suggestion of the former banjo player of Mumford & Sons and start offering safe haven for people who post memes - "give me your tweeters, your Redditors/your 4Chan edgelords bemoaning taking the knee..."
This week Winston Marshall, who left the group in 2021, went viral for an appearance in the White House press pool in which he claimed there were people in prison for "quite literally reposting memes" and asked if the Trump administration would offer asylum in cases where free speech was under threat.
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Some even speculated that the question may have been directly inspired by Graham Linehan, a prolific user of 𝕏 (formerly Twitter), known for his anti-transgender activism.
Reposting the video, actor Rob Schneider said: "We have filed for Political Asylum in the United States for a British Writer/Director who has been blacklisted and discriminated against in the United Kingdom for his 'Speech.'"
We have filed for Political Asylum in the United States for a British Writer/Director who has been blacklisted and discriminated against in the United Kingdom for his 'Speech.'
More info to come… https://t.co/y6cAvmr1IV — Rob Schneider 🇺🇸 (@RobSchneider) April 28, 2025
Linehan, who is the creator of the IT Crowd and the co-creator of Father Ted, is Irish but is working on a sitcom in Arizona alongside Schneider and Andrew Doyle.
The 56-year-old is due at Westminster Sheriff Court on May 12 on charges of harassment without violence and criminal damage, and is also being sued for alleged defamation by the LGBT rights campaigner David Paisley at the High Court.
According to a subsequent post by Schneider, Linehan is now "approved to work and live in the United States of America", though there's no indication has has been given formal political asylum.
But who is the intrepid reporter seeking asylum for the victims of the meme wars?
Winston Aubrey Aladar deBalkan Marshall is the son of Sir Paul Marshall, the multi-millionaire owner of GB News and Unherd.
Winston Marshall Educated at the exclusive St Paul's school in London, he was inspired to play the banjo after seeing the Coen Brothers' film O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Insulated from the pressure of having to go to university or get a job by his parents' wealth, he grew dreadlocks and toured with a band called Captain Kick and the Cowboy Ramblers.
"I looked like a f***ing tit," Marshall admitted in a 2013 Rolling Stone interview. "Technically, I suppose I was following all the right behaviour patterns of a trustafarian."
Seeing Captain Kick, though, had inspired University of Edinburgh student Marcus Mumford - whom Marshall had met a few years previously - to start writing music and ultimately form Mumford & Sons.
The group, who all attended fee-paying schools, self-financed their debut album Sigh No More following several years of extensive touring which had built their following.
Lead single 'Little Lion Man' proved an unlikely hit on both sides of the pond, cracking the top 50 on the Billboard Hot 100 Stateside and going top 30 back in Blighty.
Sigh No More didn't make the top 10 on the album chart in the week of its release, but would eventually climb to number two in its 72nd week on the chart, having been named Album of the Year at the Brit Awards the previous week.
Mumford & Sons (Image: PAUL JOHN BAYFIELD)
It went three times platinum in the United States, meaning it sold more than three million copies, cracking America in the way few British bands ever do.
Its follow-up, Babel went straight to number one in the UK and US, outselling the likes of Lana Del Rey, Green Day and Justin Bieber and the group backed Bob Dylan at the Grammy Awards.
Not everyone, however, was enamoured with the sight of four posh boys aping the sound and look of country-folk.
"They look like f***ing Amish people," said Liam Gallagher of Oasis while one review of Babel sniffed "to be able to look at a banjo without being overcome with a desire to use the neck end to beat its owner to death is a beautiful and underrated thing".
A Facebook page named 'I Hate Mumford & Sons' set out its mission statement thus: "Let us forget our conflicts and put our differences aside, for there is a new evil at hand that threatens the very fiber of our being. Humanity must now unite in our hatred for the treacherous banjo bastards Mumford & Sons and join together as one force to ensure that our future is kept safe from the destruction of euphoric banjo anthems sung by annoying upper class waistcoat sporting husky little f***s."
So far, so normal - band gets popular, band gets hated by the cool kids, band continues to shift records by the truckload. So it had gone for Coldplay and U2 before them and so it would for Ed Sheeran after them.
In 2018 though the controversial professor Jordan Peterson posted an image on social media of a meeting with the group at their London studio.
Dr Peterson is a right-wing academic who believes that white privilege is a "Marxist lie" and said of a man who killed 10 people with a van in his native Canada: "He was angry at God because women were rejecting him. The cure for that is enforced monogamy."
That Mumford & Sons had invited the academic to their studio raised red flags, one Twitter user quipping: "I assumed they were 'my dad was a vicar' Tory, not 'concerned about white birth rates' Tory."
It soon emerged that Marshall was the one who had extended the invitation, the banjo player explaining: "I primarily was very interested in Dr. Peterson's work on psychology, read both his books and found it very, very interesting.
"I don't think that having a photograph with someone means you agree with everything they say."
That might have been that, but then in 2021 Marshall posted approvingly about the right-wing agitator Andy Ngo.
Ngo first came to prominence in 2017 when he was fired from student newspaper the Portland State Vanguard for what its editor called a violation of ethics in regard to a clip he'd posted of a Muslim student which was seized upon by the right-wing news outlet Breitbart.
He's been described as "the most dangerous grifter in America" and accused of inciting harassment against left-wing protestors through false claims and selective editing.
In 2019 he covered a protest organised by the far-right Proud Boys and was assaulted by masked demonstrators; receiving punches to the head and kicks.
Ngo blamed the injuries on antifa counter-protestors - though no individual attackers were ever identified - and was ultimately awarded $300,000 in damages because three potential defendants refused to answer the civil case.
In March 2021 Marshall praised Ngo, calling his book Unmasked "important" and the influencer a "brave man".
The musician issued a statement saying he would be taking a break from the band "to examine my blindspots" and apologised if his post had come across as approving of "hateful, divisive behaviour".
Three months later he made his departure permanent, stating that he wanted to be able to "speak my mind" without bringing "more trouble" to his bandmates.
He later signed on as a contributor for The Spectator - which his father owns - for whom he launched the 'Marshall Matters' podcast in early 2022.
The name is a pun on the real name of hip-hop star Eminem, and episodes included 'The True Cost of Net Zero' and 'How To Stop The Boats'.
Marshall has since gone all-in on right-wing commentary, now hosting The Winston Marshall Show as well as a Substack blog.
Podcast guests are a veritable who's who of the modern right: Douglas Murray, Nigel Farage, Bret Weinstein.
Last year he appeared at the Oxford Union to debate the then speaker of the US Congress, Nancy Pelosi, on whether or not populism is a threat to democracy.
Chiding the Democratic congresswoman on the word itself he said "elites use it to show their contempt for ordinary people" and that "populism, as you know, is the politics of the ordinary people against an elite".
Quite how the privately-educated son of a hedge fund manager and media baron fits outside of 'the elite' is unclear.
Perhaps more concerningly though, Marshall revealed on April 20 that he's picked up a banjo for the first time in four years on the urging of singer-songwriter Oliver Anthony.
The 'West London folk scene' was bad enough, no-one needs to hear MAGA & Sons.