The actor and politician Laurence Fox has been accused of “insulting the intelligence of everyone present” during a libel trial at the high court over an argument on social media.
Fox had called for a boycott of Sainsbury’s in October 2020 on X, then known as Twitter, in response to the supermarket chain saying it would provide a safe space for black employees during Black History Month. He was called “a racist” by the drag artist Crystal, the former Stonewall trustee Simon Blake, and the broadcaster Nicola Thorp.
Fox, 45, subsequently termed each of the trio a “paedophile”, in a move he said was “diminishing the ridiculousness” of being labelled a racist. This prompted the libel action by Blake and Crystal, also known as Colin Seymour.
The Reclaim party founder, who denies being a racist, is counter-suing all three for libel over their tweets.
Patrick Green KC, representing the actor, argued on Friday that the social media row had been started by the claimants and that his client was defending himself.
He said: “Other than upsetting trolling there wasn’t any harm in any real sense.
“What the court is considering is harm to reputation – we say there isn’t any. There’s a good reason for it, which is that nobody thought the allegations [that they were paedophiles] to be true. No-one formed an adverse view and indeed there appears to be evidence quite to the contrary.”
The barrister said in written submissions that the libel claims by Blake and Seymour “should not have been brought” and that “dominant was the aim to ‘take him down’, and worse, as well as discrediting Mr Fox as he was launching his political party”. Green concluded: “Whether one agrees or disagrees with Mr Fox’s views on various topics, he is not ‘a racist’. That is important to him.”
Green said nothing in Fox’s initial message on X about Sainsbury’s would “lead anyone to the honest opinion that he was racist”.
Lorna Skinner KC, representing Blake, Seymour and Thorp, said in written submissions that Fox’s explanations of what he meant in his social media posts “ranged from the nonsensical to the incredible, revealing a level of arrogance that is frankly insulting to the intelligence of everyone present at the trial”.
Skinner earlier described the former GB News presenter as “unequivocally racist”, describing his evidence throughout the trial as lacking honesty and consistency.
She said: “Each of the claimants was honest, open, and consistent. Laurence Fox was not.
“[He] gave long rambling answers regarding the context of those tweets [and] refused to accept that in the absence of that context his meaning could be misunderstood.
“It is notable that the more egregious examples of Mr Fox’s racism are also the most recent, which reveals a trend over time in which Mr Fox becomes increasingly emboldened to speak his mind.”
Skinner said the actor “has made a number of highly controversial statements about race”, adding: “If, and to the extent that, Mr Fox has been harmed in his reputation, it is his own conduct and not the claimants’ comments on it that caused that harm”.
The trial before Mrs Justice Collins Rice ended on Friday, with a decision expected at a later date.
