Guido Fawkes website owner Paul Staines has paid green industrialist Dale Vince £75,000 towards legal costs, according to a new High Court statement about the legal battle.
Vince’s lawyer Annabell Hood made a lengthy statement in open court on Friday which appears to conclude the legal side of the dispute.
Staines said afterwards that he thought Vince was “thin-skinned” and “we simply couldn’t afford to keep fighting”.
Vince meanwhile said the case was an “important win for free speech”.
Hood said in court: “On 9 October 2023, Mr Vince was interviewed by Stig Abell for Times Radio. The interview covered various topics, including the atrocities committed by Hamas in Israel two days previously and the wider situation in Israel and Palestine. During the interview, Mr Vince confirmed that he agreed with Labour’s position that Hamas were terrorists and condemned their attack on 7 October 2023.
“On 13 and 14 March 2024, Mr Staines published articles on the Guido Fawkes blog falsely accusing Mr Vince of having expressed support for Hamas during the Times Radio interview. Mr Staines called for the donations Mr Vince had made to the Labour Party to be returned. He published similar allegations on social media.
“Mr Staines’ false allegations were adopted and/or repeated widely.
“The allegation that Mr Vince supported Hamas was highly defamatory…
“On 4 April 2024, Mr Vince invited Mr Staines to resolve the matter by retracting the false allegations, apologising and paying Mr Vince’s legal costs. Mr Vince indicated that he would waive any claim for damages if Mr Staines agreed to do this.
“Rather than accept this offer, Mr Staines chose to ‘double down’, claiming that his website was based offshore and that he was immune from suit.
“Mr Staines’ stance forced Mr Vince to bring libel proceedings in order to obtain vindication. These were issued on 4 June 2024, with the Court granting permission for
proceedings to be served in Ireland (Mr Staines’ country of domicile).
“In the event, Mr Staines did accept the jurisdiction of the Court and initially sought to defend the claim, defiantly publishing a further article repeating the libel on 5 July 2024, which ended: “We’re not apologising and we’re not settling.”
“During the course of the proceedings, Mr Staines published a number of further publications in which he justified the publication of the false allegations, and suggested that the claim was a strategic lawsuit against public participation (‘a SLAPP’) and that Mr Vince was seeking to have his website shut down in a form of ‘Chinese style’ censorship.
“Mr Vince is a passionate supporter of freedom of expression and a free press, but this does not extend to the publication of highly damaging demonstrable falsehoods.”
Hood said that legal costs of £143,000 have been incurred so far and so far Staines has paid £75,000. The final costs to be paid will be assessed by the court if they are not agreed.
Staines said: “It has cost some £250,000 to fight this case, which has not been a bit of fun for me nor Richard Tice.”
Speaking on the same podcast, Vince said he was being counter-sued by Richard Tice for describing him as a “far right” politician because he is the deputy leader of Reform UK.
Staines said: “We could have appealed this judgement, but Dale would inevitably have used his wealth to continue wearing us down, this has been going on for a year, life is just too short…
“We argued unsuccessfully that we expressed an opinion about political statements that he made, the judge ruled we made statements of fact.
“I am strongly of the opinion that these types of actions, which are political arguments that Dale Vince has publicly characterised in partisan terms, should be prohibited under the proposed cross-party supported legislation to block SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation).”
Vince said: “This was never about the money – which I’ve donated to charities working in Palestine. It’s about free speech and being able to exercise that right without a right-wing pile-on.
“This is an important win for free speech, until now Paul Staines and his Guido Fawkes website have boasted that they were immune from UK law because their servers were offshore – in what you might call a ‘libel haven’ – that conceit is punctured and perhaps now he’ll think twice before smearing people for clicks.”
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