Thread by @fascinatorfun

Are our courts a playground for bullies? Just ask Catherine Belton | Nick Cohen | The Guardian

Superb from ⁦@NickCohen4⁩

These billionaires aren’t just suing Harper Collins. They are suing the journalist personally, ⁦@CatherineBelton⁩
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

“They have brought their cases to dear old London town, with its quaint judges in 18th-century wigs and gowns and gothic courtrooms, and with laws that can look as if they are made to match, for all their claims to modernity.”

“As Belton appeared to foresee, London’s lawyers are hard at work. Carter-Ruck, CMS, Harbottle & Lewis and Taylor Wessing have a billionaire apiece in a kind of socialism of the litigious.”

Last week, Raab promised to fight “with the staunchest resolve” Russia’s “malign activities aimed at undermining other countries’ democratic systems”.

How ironical in the week when Prince Michael of Kent is caught in a sting to sell Kremlin access.

“If the foreign secretary is serious, perhaps he should take a look at London’s high-class service sector for the super-rich. He is unlikely to be able to rely on the legal profession to ask the hard moral and political questions for him.”

“On the one hand, the UK government promotes a global Media Freedom Coalition. On the other, the UK is denounced by the Foreign Policy Centre as “the most frequent country of origin” for foreign legal threats against investigative journalists.”