Today the Southport attack suspect Axel Muganwa Rudakubana was due in Liverpool Crown Court for a pre-trial preparation hearing. His case has not been listed and Guido can find no explanation. The highly emotive killings of young girls at a Taylor Swift dance party sparked rioting over suspicions that it was a terror motivated incident. The authorities went to great lengths to disabuse the public of this notion in carefully phrased language which cast doubt on that possibility. No doubt with the intention of calming public concern.

After four months police investigators and prosecutors must surely have compiled their case, so why is the hearing not going ahead? This will give rise to the suspicion in some quarters that it’s because the authorities having carefully misdirected the media and the public and are now panicking about how and when to reveal ‘inconvenient facts’ which will cast the fury and the riots in a very different light. There are sometimes mundane reasons for a case to be delayed or moved. However, the fact that Tommy Robinson is planning a big march tomorrow in London might not be unrelated… Robinson is due to attend Folkestone police station today at 3pm.

The Good Law Project’s soul-searching post-election period looks like it’s coming along. It now says it “has decided to revert to the model operated by other legal non-profits of procuring legal services through an in-house legal team and is closing its wholly owned law firm Good Law Practice.“ Curious that the practice designed to litigate against the government has closed swiftly after… the change of government…

So long to likely the worst-performing judicial review practice the UK legal system has ever seen. Last week Jolyon’s outfit sent a survey to its supporters asking whether they should attack the government any more now that the election is finished. Looks like they’ve settled on an answer…

Guido has long documented the travails of notorious legal loser Maugham. Jolyon declared seven weeks ago that he was leaving for “the mountains” and would be back in two weeks. Jolyon’s project will continue, though now with less enthusiasm and capacity to challenge the government. Surprise, surprise…

This week Baroness Stowell, who chairs the Communications and Digital Committee, told the Lords that

“SLAPPs* are illegitimate and aggressive lawfare, used by all kinds of the rich and powerful to silence politicians, journalists and public bodies. They are an abuse of our legal system, and they are a threat to press freedom.”

Stowell reminded them that just before the Dissolution for the general election, they were very close to outlawing SLAPPs in their entirety, through the then Government supporting a Labour MP’s Private Member’s Bill. The legislation had bipartisan support from Labour and the Tories.

She asked the Justice Minister Lord Ponsonby

“Would the Minister ensure that his Government supported another Private Member’s Bill, if another MP was to bring forward a revised version that incorporated all the amendments and agreements reached with the previous Government before the general election? If not, could he commit to the Government bringing forward their own legislation in this first Session of Parliament to outlaw SLAPPs comprehensively?”

He assured her that “the Government are taking the matter very seriously and are establishing working parties, working at pace to try to address this issue.” As well they might given one of their own number is on the receiving end of just such aggressive lawfare, being used by a rich and powerful oligiarch to silence politicians and journalists.

Lord Bailey, Richard Tice MP and Guido’s editor, Paul Staines, are fighting Dale Vince’s lawfare in his attempt to silence us for criticising his equating of Hamas with freedom fighters. He’s already intimidated three MPs who commented on his characterisation of Hamas into withdrawing their words. All of them felt it was fair comment and only backed down under financial duress. Shaun Bailey can’t afford to fight an expensive SLAPP defamation case, yet feels he has to stand his ground no matter the consequences and sleepless nights. For mega-rich Dale Vince it is in his own words, “a bit of fun” suing us. 

Anti-SLAPP** legislation isn’t just about stopping foreign oligarchs from abusing the legal system, it is about stopping homegrown oligarchs avoiding scrutiny too. Free speech underpins democracy, it is crucial that rich, political donors with connections to those in power are not able via the courts to intimidate critics into silence.

*Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation

**Dale’s lawyers have written to claim that Guido even opining that Dale’s action is a SLAPP is in itself defamatory. Paradoxically if they really did sue for claiming his action was a SLAPP it would arguably prove beyond doubt that it was indeed a SLAPP.

In a High Court ruling today, Judge Jaron Lewis struck out Dale Vince’s claim against the Daily Mail, stating that it was “not potentially viable” and “bound to fail”.

The Judge said: “There is a contradiction in the claimant’s case. The claimant accepts that the headline and photograph do not accurately summarise the article, although his pleaded case on ‘extrinsic facts’ is that they always do.”

He added: “At its highest, it could be said that some readers will have believed that headlines always accurately summarise the underlying article, but this is no more than an opinion, and is insufficient to support an innuendo meaning.”

Concluding: “The claim is not potentially viable, and there is no basis for exercising discretion in the claimant’s favour.”

Guido congratulates Associated Newspapers for standing up to thin-skinned Dale who is spraying writs and threats of writs around like confetti – using his oligarchical wealth and power to menace critics and political opponents.

The principles in this case have a directly analogous application in the cases Dale Vince has brought against Shaun Bailey, Guido, and Richard Tice. That is if the cases even proceed beyond the first hurdle – he must disprove that his hopeless case is not a SLAPP against political critics. The end result will be the same.

Starmer has snubbed Emily Thornberry by appointing human rights lawyer Richard Hermer KC, of Matrix Chambers, as his Attorney General. Hermer is close to Starmer – he’s spoken at Labour Conference, offered tours of the Royal Court of Justice to Camden Labour members, and donated £5,000 to the Labour leader’s campaign. Like Starmer, Hermer has certainly picked a direction in his legal focus…

Eyebrows were raised very high when Hermer began to advise Labour on the government’s BDS bill last Summer. Hermer has co-authored a chapter in a book called “Corporate Complicity in Israel’s Occupation: Evidence from the London Session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine” co-edited by Asa Winstanley and Frank Barat. The book says it has the intention of “examining the involvement of corporations in the illegal occupation of Palestinian land by Israel”…

Co-author Asa, the notorious anti-Israel activist and crank, happens to also be the associate editor of the “Electronic Intifada” blog and wrote an article claiming “most members of the UK’s Labour Party support the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and consider Israel to be an apartheid state“. Some of her other tomes include “WEAPONISING ANTI-SEMITISM: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn“. Hermer’s other co-author has tweeted endorsing the idea that “Israel’s policies amount to Apartheid“…

Meanwhile, the co-authors of Hermer’s specific chapter have links to the BDS campaign itself – one of them served as lawyer for Hassan Diab, who was convicted (in absentia) and sentenced to life in prison for a terror attack outside a synagogue in Paris in 1980 that killed four and wounded 46. Interesting bedfellows…

Hermer himself has pushed for the ICJ to consider whether Israel is an “apartheid state” and has spoken at events for Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, which is itself allegedly running a BDS campaign against construction firm JCB. This year he has spent his time representing Gerry Adams. This is now the government’s top chief legal adviser.

Dale Vince has briefed the Guardian that he is suing Guido’s editor for daring to publish the actual words he said in an interview with Times Radio’s Stig Abell.

Dale – who retains the services of former Boris spinner Lee Cain – also briefed the Guardian that he is going to block Guido from being read in Britain by getting a judge to order internet service providers to create Dale’s own personal firewall to censor Guido – in the same way the Chinese Communist Party operates a political firewall on the internet. Guido would in Dale’s fantasy become Samizdata, read in Starmer’s Britain only by tech savvy users or on the dark web.

Vince says he is going to have to do this because Guido has kept his servers (and the editor himself) offshore and ignored British court orders for twenty years. Guido could of course continue to do so…

For the first time in twenty years I am not going to avail of that safe haven protection. I will, along with Richard Tice and Shaun Bailey not be going down on bended knee to this thin-skinned, narcissistic bully. We have no intention of apologising for reporting and commenting on his disgraceful equivocation. We’re going to make a stand and defend free speech and our reporting of the actual words he said.

Dale Vince is also suing Reform’s Richard Tice MP and Lord Bailey for commenting on his claim regarding Hamas that “one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist“. Likewise he threatened to sue (now former) Tory MPs Andrew Percy, Mark Jenkinson and Michael Fabricant. The Tory MPs reluctantly agreed a mutual statement on the advice of the Conservative Party’s lawyers rather than risk an expensive legal battle. None of them wanted to, all of them thought their comments were fair and told Guido that regrettably they had to withdraw them under financial duress. Not one of the MPs wanted to back down, they just did not want to risk a costly battle.

GB News made an apology for Shaun Bailey’s on air comments at the insistence of their legal insurers. Lord Bailey is however standing by the truth of his comments. He is a Christian and refuses to be bullied by Dale Vince’s lawyers into making a statement that he believes is untrue.

Dale is not suing any of the many other publications that reported his outrageous characterisation of Hamas as freedom fighters. The Labour Party donor is only threatening his perceived political opponents, using his vast wealth to bully them into not criticising him. This meets the legal definition of a SLAPP – a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. A favourite tactic of publicity shy oligarchs who don’t like scrutiny.

Dale’s been claiming – so far unchallenged – that the clip was edited. It was not edited or manipulated or spliced in any way, it was one contiguous 16 second clip of the only really newsworthy and widely reported part of the Times Radio interview and the context is clear:

While we’re on the subject of extremist donors and returning their donations…https://t.co/rkaxVMJqZR pic.twitter.com/NxHEgrBKKz

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) March 13, 2024

Dale has only just realised that unlike GB News’ insurers or the Tory MPs we are going to stand up to him. We’re not apologising and we’re not settling. We’re fighting to defend our reporting of the truth and his attempts to censor criticism.

Paul Staines