A Labour donor and Ecotricity founder has accepted nearly 10,000 in damages over false claims that he supported Hamas after the terrorist group attacked Israel.
In a statement at the High Court on Friday, lawyers for Dale Vince said that Paul Staines, the former owner of the Guido Fawkes political blog website, had agreed to pay damages and costs over articles published last year.
The court was told that the articles had been removed from the site and Staines had agreed not to repeat the claims.
However, Staines, who launched the irreverent site more than 20 years ago, claimed that he had settled Vince’s claim because he “simply couldn’t afford to keep fighting” and said that Vince was “in my opinion a thin-skinned, narcissistic, rich bully”.
Staines said that he had been advised that “we could have appealed against this judgement” but the case would become too costly, adding: “This has been going on for a year, life is just too short.”
Lawyers for Vince told the court on Friday that the businessman’s total costs in bringing the claim were about 143,000 and that Staines had agreed to make an interim payment of 75,000.
After the court statement, Vince said that “freedom of the press is not the freedom to lie.”
The row dates from 2023, when Vince was speaking on Times Radio about the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 that year, in which nearly 2,000 Israelis were killed and 251 taken hostage.
CHRIS HELGREN/REUTERS
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