Robin Monotti

Andrew Bridgen press statement.
Matt Hancock tried and failed to stop this libel claim reaching a trial in March 2024. Now his second attempt to stop this claim has failed in 2025.
In her judgment handed down today, Mrs Justice Collins Rice dismissed Mr Hancock’s application seeking a termination ruling, and Mr Hancock has been ordered to pay £18,000 in legal costs within 14 days. The Court concluded that “This claim is … set to proceed to the full evidential stages and on to trial”
In reaching that decision, the Court noted a number of serious problems with Mr Hancock’s position.
Regarding Mr Hancock’s contention that the tweet labelling my actions antisemitic caused me no serious harm, Collins Rice J described the libel as a “relatively grave libel”, and accepted that this might well be a ‘mass publication case’.
Collins Rice J also noted that Mr Hancock refuses to take the tweet down, noting: “the persistence of the publication to the present day”.
The Court recognised my case that “‘antisemitic in character’ is a distinctively toxic and corrosive type of gall in a political context, an epithet understood to be so solemn, momentous and ultimately politically fatal as to be capable of being found at trial to be insufficiently pertinent” to what I had tweeted,
The Court recognised my case that “‘antisemitic in character’ crosses a line between fact-tethered opinion and gratuitous vituperative smear – in the wider context of a difference of political views about…. the merits and motivations of the vaccination programmes”
As to Mr Hancock’s honest opinion defence, the Judge noted that Mr Hancock was asking the court to terminate my claim but: “without his having either pleaded to or explained in evidence the genuine nature of his own belief”.
In concluding there were compelling reasons for the case to go to trial, the Court rightly pointed out that the honest opinion defence does not cover “vituperative make believe” and noted in particular “ the Jewish doctors’ letter” which said my tweet was not antisemitic and “criticised Mr Hancock for weaponizing the language of antisemitism to suppress vaccine criticism”. Collins Rice J also made reference to the Holocaust survivor Vera Sharav who was on record as “drawing parallels between the extreme and discriminatory public health meansure during the pandemic and the Holocaust”.
The Court noted that Mr Hancock had not put before the Court evidence that “other respected commentators did consider it antisemitic in character, or that similar utterances have been so regarded on other occasions” noting that “That is evidence not at present before the court”. On the contrary the Court noted that: “other commentators of comparable stature did not do, and were perhaps careful not to.. ….. condemn Mr Bridgen in precisely the way Mr Hancock did”
The Court noted that “simply setting out the nature of the disputed issues demonstrates its highly evaluative character…. not a matter to be rushed on an interlocutory basis”
Mr Hancock’s previous comments about “an absurd libel case he will undoubtedly lose” now look like the expensively created bluster that they always were.
We disagree with one comment in the Court’s judgment about the consequences of Mr Hancock not pleading the defence of ‘truth’ and we are considering whether to take that point to the Court of Appeal.
ANDREW BRIDGEN

https://t.me/ABridgen

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