CA-2024-001499 - [2025] EWCA Civ 1321

On 1 October 2020, the supermarket chain Sainsbury’s Plc (“Sainsbury’s”)published two tweets on its Twitter account @sainsburys.

On 4 October 2020, Mr Fox posted a tweet about this (“Mr Fox’s Sainsbury’s tweet”). This quote-tweeted the second Sainsbury’s tweet and added the following:

Dear @sainsburys

I won’t be shopping in your supermarket ever again whilst you promote racial segregation and discrimination.

I sincerely hope others join me. RT.

Further reading here [website link to the Sainsbury’s Website BLM Statement.]

Each of the claimants saw and read Mr Fox’s Sainsbury’s tweet on the day it was posted. They responded by posting the following tweets (“the racist tweets”):

A little later on 4 October 2020, Mr Fox responded to each of these tweets by posting a tweet which quote-tweeted what had been said about him and added the word “paedophile” (“the paedophile tweets”). The words he used were:

In the meantime, Mr Blake used his Twitter account to respond to what Mr Fox had said about him. At 17.33, he posted a screenshot of the exchange in which he called Mr Fox a racist and Mr Fox called him a paedophile, with the comment: “Here we go”. At 17:37 he posted, in reply to his exchange with Mr Fox, “@LozzaFox just checking whether you are mixing me up with someone else or if this is just a standard retort.”

At 18.24 on 4 October 2020, Mr Fox posted the following tweet:

Language is powerful. To accuse someone of racism without any evidence whatsoever to back up that accusation is a deep slander. It carries the same stigma and reputation destroying harm as accusing someone of paedophilia. Here endeth the lesson.

Some 35 minutes later, at 19:11, Mr Blake quote-tweeted the tweet in which Mr Fox had called him a paedophile, with the message “Hi @LozzaFox – please would you remove this tweet as you know it to be untrue. Thanks.” At some point between then and 09:35 the following day, 5 October 2020, Mr Fox did delete that tweet and his other paedophile tweets. On the morning of 5 October he posted the following on his Twitter account:

If the game nowadays is to throw baseless insults and accusations about, then we should all be free to participate.

Having said that, I had deleted the tweets posted yesterday, in response to being repeatedly, continuously and falsely smeared as a racist, as they just serve as a distraction to the important work that needs to be done.

Deleting a tweet makes the analytics unavailable. For that reason the precise timing of the deletion is not known. Deletion also removes a tweet from within any quote-tweet, replacing it with a message “This post is unavailable”. So, for instance, Mr Blake’s quote tweets of what Mr Fox had said about him were unavailable by the morning of 5 October 2020. But deletion has no effect on a tweet that contains a screenshot, such as Mr Blake’s “Here we go” tweet. That remained available on Mr Blake’s account. What Mr Blake, Mr Seymour and Ms Thorp had tweeted about Mr Fox also remained available on their accounts.

The parties’ tweets resulted in mainstream media reporting. These included an interview Mr Fox gave to Julia Hartley-Brewer on Talk Radio at about 08:20 on 5 October 2020. She put to him that he had “adopted a new technique” for dealing with people who called him a racist. He replied, “Well … if one is going to throw around a baseless accusation of racism ... then why not, if that’s the game ... throw around some baseless accusations in return.” Another item was an article published on MailOnline at 09:35 on 5 October. This referred to Mr Fox’s paedophile tweets as “unsubstantiated slurs” and quoted his tweet of earlier that day announcing their deletion. Numerous other articles about the matter appeared later that day and over the following days.

On 13 October 2020, Mr Fox appeared on the Nick Ferrari radio show. Asked if he regretted the paedophile tweets, he made substantially the same point as he had made to Julia Hartley-Brewer: “If you are going to make an allegation against someone as serious as racism … my response is to go: what is the most cruel word I can respond to you with? So you can understand what it is like to feel falsely and baselessly accused of something which is extremely serious.” On the same day Mr Fox posted three tweets as follows:

To that end and not because I’ve been sued (I haven’t) or because anyone has put me under pressure to say something (they haven’t), I’d like to apologise for the way I reacted last week in reaction to being constantly (without any evidence whatsoever) labelled a racist ...

I adore our beautiful language. Seeing it corrupted by casually tossing horrible insults around in order to maintain a climate of fear to silence different opinions, saddens me hugely, I was attempting to make the point that words have meanings that are extremely powerful ...

On reflection, I could have done this in a wiser and more effective way. I abhor discrimination in all its forms, just as I take a principled stance against racism. The end. L.

On 1 April 2021, the claimants sued Mr Fox for libel in respect of the paedophile tweets. He counterclaimed for libel in respect of the racist tweets. The outcomes of the claims and the counterclaims turned, as I have said, on the judge’s approach to proof of reputational harm.