The Labour donor Dale Vince has employed a new legal approach to sue the political blog Guido Fawkes for libel, despite the website being hosted overseas.
Vince, who has given millions of pounds to Labour in the run-up to the general election, says the Westminster-focused blog falsely suggested that he supports Hamas, a proscribed terrorist group.
The green energy entrepreneur is now personally suing the site’s Ireland-based owner Paul Staines. The editor has previously declared that his Irish nationality and his blog being hosted in the US meant that “I don’t have to pay attention to what a British judge orders me to do”.
Vince said: “He believes his ‘offshore’ structure protects him from being accountable, that he can flout our laws and disregard basic principles … With this legal action we hope to change that.”
The green energy businessman has been given permission by an English judge to serve libel papers on Staines via email and post to his home in Ireland. Staines declined to comment.
Vince is also seeking a website blocking order, which means that a London-based court could order British internet service providers to block access to specific blogposts. The approach is more commonly used in copyright cases, such as the blocking of illegal Premier League football streams.
The case hinges on a Guido Fawkes post from March entitled “Multi-million pound donor to Labour party says Hamas are ‘freedom fighters’”. It consists of an edited clip from a Times Radio interview where Vince is asked: “Is a terrorist attack from Hamas Palestine defending itself?”
Vince replies: “I think one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, right? That’s how it works.”
The businessman claims the clip was used to imply that he supported the terrorist acts of Hamas, including “the mass murder, kidnapping and rape which took place on 7 October”.
The Daily Mail and GB News have already apologised and paid damages to Vince over similar stories.
Vince said in a statement: “Some weeks ago, the Guido Fawkes website published false claims about me which spread quickly amongst rightwing channels and commentators, probably in part due to the imminent election. The intention was clear, to damage my credibility as a person and as a Labour supporter.
“We’ve secured numerous retractions with costs and damages already, such as from the Daily Mail and GB News, and for me this is the most important piece of the puzzle, the source. I’m pleased we’ve now been given permission to take action against the editor, Paul Staines.”
The Guido Fawkes site has previously said it asked Vince “to put on the record unambiguously that he does not think Hamas are freedom fighters”, in which case they “will be happy to withdraw and/or amend our previous reports accordingly”.
It added: “They stated he had previously condemned terrorism on the record. We accept and never claimed otherwise that Mr Vince has previously condemned terrorism, including saying of the specific acts of Hamas terrorism on the weekend of October 7, 2023: ‘I don’t support what they did.’ We remain baffled therefore why he won’t even through his lawyers confirm that he does not think Hamas are, in the words he used, ‘freedom fighters’.”
Guido Fawkes has links to the Tory party, having recently appointed the Conservative peer Ross Kempsell as a contributing editor. A former head of Boris Johnson’s Downing Street policy unit, he was given a peerage in Johnson’s resignation honours list.
