Laurence Fox owes me £90,000. This is how I’m going to spend his money

In 2020, Fox called me a paedophile on Twitter, (he refused to retract it and apologise) and so I, alongside Simon Blake and Nicola Thorp, took him to court. 

And won.

After three and half years, we have a conclusion. Reading the judgement was incredibly vindicating.

Despite some occasional bravado on my part this has been an exhausting, stressful process that has exposed me to abuse from some of the worst kinds of people.

So it was satisfying to receive an award that acknowledges not only the defamation I suffered, but also the ordeal of the process itself of trying to get justice. 

Awarding damages is obviously a complicated combination of factors, but £90,000 recognises the seriousness of the defamation, its huge reach, our special vulnerability to it as gay men (paedophilia is an old homophobic trope) and Fox’s conduct before, during and after the trial. 

It’s important to say – I did not want to take this to court, but Fox forced our hand with his intractability and his countersuit, which he also lost. 

The judge recognised that Laurence Fox has not made it easy on us, noting that ‘he wielded his megaphone to denigrate publicly the Claimants and their efforts to achieve justice and vindication in these proceedings’.

Since the award, the former actor has unsurprisingly continued to reject the court’s decision and threatened to appeal. 

At one point in a video rant he posted on Twitter, Fox read from the ruling and loudly shouted ‘f**k off’ at parts he found particularly disagreeable. 

I’ve given up trying to imagine what motivates someone like Laurence Fox – does he have a shame kink? Does he love being publicly humiliated? 

I can’t imagine how it would feel to be trending on Twitter with thousands of people mocking your financial ruin and pointing out all your failures, but I’d be surprised to find out it makes you happy.

So I’ll admit with a bit of schadenfreude, watching Fox reel and reading some of the tweets directed at him made for some very entertaining reading for me over the weekend.

However, the cynical side of me thinks this is all part of the plan. 

He was forced to admit in court that ‘he was getting a lot of money for this game’ – referencing his £250,000 per year salary as leader of the Reclaim Party. 

This is in stark contrast to his pleading in the stand about his inability to get a job or a mortgage since being branded a racist.

So maybe his refusal to take the L (in any area of life) makes sense as part of a political strategy that we’ve seen employed so successfully by the likes of Donald Trump: If you find yourself in a hole, just keep digging, and keep blaming others. 

That way if anyone happens to notice you’re in a hole, it definitely wasn’t your fault. In fact, you’re the real victim here! You were forced into this hole by woke extremists! They’re the real hole diggers!  

It’s something the judge commented on when he observed that Fox was ‘continuing to attach blame and discredit to the Claimants and hold them and their conduct of this litigation responsible for a range of his own life’s adversities.’ 

For right-wing agitators, this tactic keeps their base outraged and increases polarisation. 

And apparently this is a goal worth spending money on, even so far as to pursue a doomed-from-the-start multi-million pound lawsuit over. 

Thankfully, it seems that, in the UK, these tactics fall down when they meet an impartial legal system. 

Our judge was wise to his tricks – saying that his online behaviour was ‘characterised by impulsiveness, theatricality, a disregard for or uninterest in impact on others, and an unfastidiousness about objective factuality’. 

Which seems to me a description that tracks with his conduct in court, where his behaviour was wild in the extreme. 

He did the New Zealand haka, used the N word, and then came up with a bizarre reference to gang rape in an all-male Ugandan prison as a reason people might hypothetically hate Black people. The mind boggles.

Our victory seems to be translating into other common sense legal victories as well; not only have we had our success, but Fox recently dropped his claim against another person he was suing for calling him a racist and was forced to pay his legal costs. 

And it goes beyond just Fox. 

TV’s Dr. Ranj recently settled out of court against a troll who alleged he was a paedophile – and other prominent anti-trans voices have tweeted similar slurs. I can only hope they too feel the sharp end of the legal system. 

Even though I know that peddling outrage clearly pays in some cases, I hope our victory shows that the cost-benefit ratio is changing. 

Because despite Laurence Fox trending for at least two days, a screenshot posted over the weekend showed his monetised Twitter earnings amounted to just a couple of hundred quid a month. 

At that rate, it will take over 30 years to cover his £180k damages order, and just a couple centuries more for the estimated seven-figure legal costs.

Speaking of money, I know you’re wondering what I’m going to do with the £90k. There were three original claimants in our case against Laurence Fox – myself, Simon Blake and Nicola Thorp – so we will be spitting the total £180k damages three ways despite only two of us being awarded them. 

I will give the bulk of my sum to charity, focusing on issues I know are close to Laurence’s heart – trans rights, racial equity, refugee advocacy and Palestinian solidarity to name a few. 

And I will save a bit for myself – I fancy a bidet with a fox head spout –  so that Laurence’s money can wash my vindicated ass.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. 

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