With heaviest of hearts I must report that some of London’s priciest libel lawyers came in for a spectacular bogwashing.
One can scarce imagine the moist-hankied distress this will have caused. In different circumstance it would have been worth at least fifty thousand smackers in legal letters. The emotional damage! The intrusive assault! The lowering of upstanding citizens in the estimation of others, exposing them to contempt, derision and general choruses of “yer teeth are offside, Luis Suárez”!
Dominic Raab, justice secretary, had come to the Commons to announce that the government intended to act against SLAPPs. Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation are a recent ruse used to suppress criticism in the media. They have proved particularly popular with chums of the Kremlin. Oligarchs (plus some homegrown gargoyles), eager to muzzle impudent British journalists, arrange for a swanky London lawyer to send stinky threats. Impecunious scribes and their publications will often play safe and drop stories, no matter how true and justified they be.
Halfway through the exchanges, the deputy speaker called Bob Seely (C, Isle of Wight). Seely, a bright, serious bloke, Harrovian, ex Intelligence Corps, prone to stripping to his Speedos and swimming the Solent, has been a leading backbench critic of Putin’s Russia and its elite. He has also developed an appetite for attacking their “enablers”, ie their London lawyers and accountants.
In he jumped. After praise for Raab, he said it was a shame that we now had “a corrupting cottage industry of legalised intimidation and, frankly, legalised gangsterism being offered by unscrupulous law firms in this country to some of the most wretched and unscrupulous people on Earth. I do hope that senior partners in those firms like Carter-Ruck, CMS, Mishcon and Harbottle & Lewis will consider whether they have played an entirely negative role in enabling Kremlin neo-fascism.”
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Plop. Right down the chimney. When this sort of outrage happens, your average plutocrat immediately gets on to his reputation management firm and orders them to loose forth a barrage of terrifying “cease and desist” letters. Fees: scrumptious. Countless jimmies per word. But what is a reputation management firm to do when its own reputation is in danger of being blown to smithereens? Hire itself to send a threatening letter? Where are the juicy fees in that?
Anyway, Seely spoke his strong words in the Commons chamber, where he had legal privilege. What a damnable pencil-sucker of a pickle. Short of despatching speed boats to the Solent to mow down anyone doing the doggy paddle while wearing an Old Harrovian bathing cap, what could be done?
Raab’s statement was briskly delivered. Backbenchers on both sides liked it. Angela Crawley, for the SNP, called rich Russians’ use of SLAPPs “acts of hybrid warfare”. David Davis (C, Haltemprice & Howden) “unreservedly welcomed” the policy. Chris Bryant (Lab, Rhondda): “This is really good stuff.” Clive Efford (Lab, Eltham), Raab’s predecessor Sir Robert Buckland (C, South Swindon) and the house’s ancient mariner Barry Sheerman (Lab, Huddersfield) made encouraging noises. John Whittingdale (C, Maldon) noted that SLAPPs were an international pestilence. The Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana faced 47 lawsuits at the time of her murder in 2017. Whittingdale hoped other countries would follow Raab’s policy.
The only person to be sour? Labour’s justice spokesman, Steve Reed. In a rewriting of history that would even have impressed the boys at Russia Today, Reed presented his party — which not so long ago was hot to trot with the late Max Mosley — as the free press’s sole and ardent friends. Reed went off on a spiel about the Johnson government being in bed with Putin and his cronies. He sat down to, er, silence. Reed’s foray followed Angela Rayner’s antics on Wednesday and Yvette Cooper’s tirade on Monday. Sir Keir Starmer might want to invite his shadow cabinet to try bowling around the wicket for a while.
