On 28 October, Michelle Donelan, the secretary of state for science, published a letter expressing her “disgust and outrage” that two academics who had been appointed to an advisory group had been “sharing some extremist views on social media”.
It was an extremely serious accusation levelled against two researchers who had just joined a Research England advisory group on equality, diversity and inclusion. Donelan wanted the group disbanded.
UKRI, the government research funding body of which Research England is part, issued a brief statement saying it was “deeply concerned” and “conducting an immediate investigation”.
Donelan had written directly to UKRI’s chief executive, Ottoline Leyser, and had chosen to publicise the letter to nearly 40,000 followers of her X account. Three days later, the two academics were suspended by UKRI while it investigated their social media activity.
At some point in the past few months, Donelan’s post on X was quietly deleted. This week, she published a retraction – and her department admitted the taxpayer had paid £15,000 in damages to see off the threat of further legal action from the women she had targeted.
Donelan’s complaint appeared to have been triggered by a report from Policy Exchange, and related to one of the academics, Prof Kate Sang, retweeting a Guardian article headlined “Suella Braverman urges police to crack down on Hamas support in UK”. Sang had shared it with the comment: “This is disturbing.”
The case demonstrates the perils for politicians who use their online platforms to pick political fights and garner media attention by levelling accusations against people that turn out to be unfounded. Sang said in a statement that the minister had “made a cheap political point at my expense and caused serious damage to my reputation”.
Also this week, Jacqueline Foster, a Tory peer, published an apology to a doctoral student after wrongly saying the octopus soft toy her team used as its University Challenge mascot had been chosen as an antisemitic symbol. She had to pay damages after making the claim in a post on X. The student concerned, Melika Gorgianeh, said in a statement that Foster’s comment had “a profound and deeply damaging impact on my life” and that she had received death threats.
Tamsin Allen, a partner at Bindmans who represented Sang in her libel complaint, said the case demonstrated how politicians can be unaware of the risks of going public with concerns they are entitled to raise internally. Had Donelan not tweeted her letter to UKRI, she may well not have faced libel action.
“Communications between ministers and public bodies, or between politicians, are usually protected,” Allen said. “What’s not – and rightly – protected is what they then choose to send out on their personal Twitter [now known as X] accounts to potentially millions of people.
“If she’d just written to Ottoline Leyser, there may have been an investigation and the academics would have been cleared, and probably there would have been a statement clearing them. But she might not have faced a libel claim.”
Allen said the case demonstrated “a risk, a peril, which politicians haven’t taken on board very well, and they should … They believe that because they have absolute protection in parliament, and qualified protection for those kinds of communications, that must just cover everything they do. It doesn’t. Sometimes what they do is extremely harmful. And they need to be more, not less, responsible than ordinary people, because there’s a false credibility given to what they say.
“If a minister said someone is a Hamas supporter, people might think that it’s … a considered statement made with proper research and proper due diligence, and take it seriously.”
The Donelan and Foster cases are both evidence of a febrile political environment amid the war between Israel and Hamas. Allen said she had seen a huge increase in inquiries related to comments about the conflict in Gaza.
Stuart Bruce, who advises politicians on their social media use and produced a guide for the speaker’s digital democracy commission in 2015, said this week had demonstrated the importance of public figures doing their research and relying on their staff to help them with social media.
“The idea that the politicians can do it themselves probably doesn’t hold water any more,” he said. “They need a team to help them do it, for two reasons: one, just the sheer time because of too many platforms, and secondly … you need somebody to vet what you’re saying. Just a sanity check.”
“There’s a saying in the school of journalism: ‘If your mother says she loves you, check it out,’” he added. “If you’re going to repeat something, if you’re going to make an allegation, that’s a really good adage.”
That advice may be particularly relevant to pugnacious senior Tories such as Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, and Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary. In recent weeks Badenoch has been embroiled in an extraordinary war of words with Henry Staunton, the former Post Office chair whom she sacked in January.
Another politician who takes a notably antagonistic approach is Lee Anderson, the former deputy chair of the Conservative party, who has now had the whip suspended. He has twice been threatened with libel action, including by a constituent last year. The constituent has now dropped his claim, according to a statement Anderson published on Facebook in February.
Some Tory MPs say privately that there is a pattern of senior Tories getting into trouble while trying to ingratiate themselves with the grassroots by presenting themselves as anti-woke warriors.
“You could probably say we wouldn’t be in this mess if it wasn’t for the intensity of the 24-hour news cycle and deep-seated desire to go after the anti-woke vote,” one former minister said of Donelan. “But this is entirely indefensible and totally stupid, and it’s extraordinary that she didn’t resign on the spot.”
“People in general tend to think of libel as a tool for suppressing free expression,” said Allen. “There’s some strength in that in some circumstances, but libel law is also a tool for protecting expression, as it was in this case … The minister tried to shut down what my clients were saying and made false allegations – and it was libel law that protected them.”
