Green energy industrialist Dale Vince was “libelled multiple times” by the “false allegation he supports Hamas”, the High Court has been told.
Mr Vince is suing Richard Tice MP, the deputy leader of the Reform UK party, and Paul Staines, the editor-in-chief of the Guido Fawkes website, for libel following a radio interview in October last year.
The Labour donor is also suing Lord Shaun Bailey, the former London mayoral candidate now known as Lord Bailey of Paddington, in a third libel case related to the same allegations.
Lawyers for Mr Vince told a hearing in London that during a Times Radio interview on October 9, two days after the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, Mr Vince said that “one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist” as part of a wider discussion on the issue lasting around two minutes.
In March this year, Guido Fawkes published two articles and a 16-second extract from the interview, which included the quote.
This was followed by a post on X, formerly Twitter, by Mr Tice, which claimed Mr Vince was “pro the murderous antisemitic Hamas”, the court was told.
At a preliminary hearing on Monday, Mr Justice Pepperall was asked to decide several early issues in the case, including the “natural and ordinary” meaning of the articles and whether they and the post were statements of fact or opinion.
His case is that his words have been fatally distorted and readers have been misled
William Bennett KC, appearing for Mr Vince, said in written submissions: “The claimant has been libelled multiple times by the false allegation that he supports Hamas by reason of an alleged statement attributed to him that Hamas are freedom fighters.”
In court, he continued: “His case is that his words have been fatally distorted and readers have been misled, because (Mr Staines) has chosen to take an out-of-context, a 16-second extract, from part of an interview discussing the Palestine-Israel issue which extended over a minute-and-a-half.
“The root of this claim is that very serious way that he has been misrepresented in this article.”
He continued: “Stripped of context, this does appear to be someone apologising for the behaviour of Hamas.
“Mr Vince denies that. Looked at in the proper context, his interview said nothing of the sort.”
Mr Bennett said in written submissions that the original Times Radio interview “was unremarkable and no-one in the media, mainstream or social, showed any interest in it”.
But the interview returned to the spotlight in March this year following the row over donations to the Conservative Party made by Frank Hester, who was reported to have said Labour MP Diane Abbott made him want to “hate all black women” and that she “should be shot”.
Guido Fawkes then published the two articles, which Mr Bennett said in written submissions were “accusatory and unequivocal”.
The first, published on March 13, was headlined “Multimillion-pound donor to Labour says Hamas are ‘freedom fighters’”, with the second article, titled “Jewish MP blasts Labour for taking millions from ‘Hamas freedom fighters’ donor”, published the following day.
Mr Tice posted on X on March 13, which said: “So major Labour donor is pro the murderous antisemitic Hamas… Mmmm.”
The post – which was made when Mr Tice was leader of Reform UK and before his election as MP for Boston and Skegness in Lincolnshire – did not name or picture Mr Vince, but included a copy of a tweet by Guido Fawkes, which itself contained a link to the first article which named Mr Vince and included the 16-second clip.
Mr Bennett said at least 568,000 people had seen Mr Tice’s tweet and that a “substantial number” of them would have “followed the links provided” to the Guido Fawkes article.
He said Mr Tice intended for people to read the article, adding: “If you don’t intend that, why on earth did you insert the hyperlink?”
Ben Gallop, for Mr Staines, said in written submissions that Mr Vince had “exaggerated” the meanings of the publications.
He said: “The reasonable reader would know from watching the video that the claimant did not literally say ‘Hamas are freedom fighters’”.
It would be obvious, whatever else you thought about it, that this was an absolute howler by the claimant in terms of its potential to generate adverse comment.
In court, the barrister continued that the 16-second clip was “likely to provoke a range of subjective reactions” and that it was “obvious to the reader” that it was taken from a longer interview.
He said: “We do not accept for a moment that this clip distorts what the claimant said.”
He continued: “It would be obvious, whatever else you thought about it, that this was an absolute howler by the claimant in terms of its potential to generate adverse comment.”
Richard Munden, for Mr Tice, said in written submissions that Mr Vince’s argument was “strained and unreasonable” and that readers would not have read the Guido Fawkes article from the post, as it “makes complete sense without the hyperlinked material”.
In court, he said: “This is a very simple case about a man in public life, the claimant, who has chosen to make comments on a controversial subject, and another man in public life, Mr Tice, who has given his own assessment of those comments in a brief post on social media.”
He added: “It is clearly not saying that he is a supporter of Hamas. It does not say he is out on marches… or has done anything other than express views in this interview, and that makes him, in the views of this tweeter, pro-Hamas.”
In a separate case, Mr Vince is also suing Lord Bailey over comments made by the former mayoral candidate on GB News about the issue on March 14, where he said that Mr Vince had “called Hamas freedom fighters”, and two other publications.
Mr Justice Pepperall will give his judgments on all three cases in writing at a later date.
