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Saudi bankers and Russian oligarchs love London, and not only for its chichi boutiques. English judges provide them with a unique and de-luxe service: the right to silence detractors from all corners of the globe.
Their behaviour is causing an international scandal but you would never guess it from the wretched response to the Daily Mail editor-in-chief's criticisms of Mr Justice Eady. The supposedly liberal-minded Lord Falconer, the former Labour Lord Chancellor, and Lord Lester, who once championed human rights, have burbled their defences of Eady, apparently unaware that all over the world honest people fear him.
I've been on the fringes of campaigns for freedom of expression for years, and could provide dozens of examples. But let us begin with the case that has made English law a laughing stock.
One of Barack Obama's first acts as president will be to sign into law the Libel Tourism Bill, which is sailing through the US Congress. America is an ally whose law has its roots in England but because of Eady it will not recognise the judgments of English courts.
Eady allowed the billionaire Saudi banker Khalid bin Mahfouz to sue Rachel Ehrenfeld, an American author. Ms Ehrenfeld had not published or promoted her book on the funding of terrorism in England. The sheikh had paid hundreds of millions of dollars in fines after the collapse of the corrupt Bank of Credit and Commerce International.
Eady shrugged and ordered that all copies of Ehrenfeld's book should nevertheless be pulped.
The New York politician Rory Lancman responded with a robustness our leaders can rarely manage, and thundered: "When US journalists and authors can be hauled into kangaroo courts on phoney-baloney libel charges in overseas jurisdictions who don't share our belief in freedom of speech or a free press, all of us are threatened."
And not only in America. A chill is spreading around the world. The Ukrainian website Obozrevatel was sued for libel in London by the local oligarch. It doesn't publish in English but our judges didn't care.
The human rights charity Global Witness has been threatened with libel action for criticising a corrupt African dictatorship. The Law Lords allowed the film-maker Roman Polanski to sue in Eady's court, even though he could not appear in person because he would have been arrested and deported to the US to face allegations of child abuse. Every British journalist knows of rich and dangerous men we must steer clear of for fear of cripplingly expensive libel cases before judges who do not understand democracy's need for plain speaking and open debate.
This summer the United Nations accused Britain of allowing Eady and his colleagues to stifle free speech. After this week, I don't know which is the more shameful: that Eady will see no reason to resign or that Lords Falconer and Lester will see no reason for him to go.
The odd couple (and Carla)
When Prince Charles met Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday, it was hard to know who was the more ridiculous figure. Until recently, our future king was ahead by a mile. When the public wondered who could settle the dispute between supporters and opponents of GM foods, he modestly offered himself as the arbiter. New agricultural technologies would lead to “unsustainable, unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of unmentionable awfulness,” he declared in August, and “the absolute destruction of everything”.
But in a late burst last month, the French president tried to get a Paris court to order French shops to take Sarkozy voodoo dolls off their shelves on the grounds that he owned the copyright to his image. As Prince Charles has never descended to the level of a celeb trying to hold on to her wedding pictures, I now have Sarkozy winning it by a nose.
Tax men shake their booty
Spectators at the Lord Mayor's Show watched with dread when a band from the Chartered Institute of Taxation tuned its guitars, while around their float stood a rather embarrassed band of middle-aged accountants.
“This is going to be awful,” I thought, only for the band to burst into the best cover version of the Beatles' Taxman I've heard. It then segued into Money (That's What I Want), which was sung with a passion and a poignancy that would have broken your heart if you had been there. Meanwhile, previously drab accountants turned into sleek and sassy pelvic thrusters as they boogied through the City.
There have been many unnerving moments in the credit crunch. Tax advisers getting funky was my weirdest to date.
Reader views (2)
Suggested preamble for reformed libel statute: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me".
- Blackstone Coke, London, 12/11/2008 13:33
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The Uk and England in particular are certainly now corrupt third world countries where it is becoming dangerous to even think outside the approved 'boxes', let alone take any action. From the scandal of the expensively tax funded social services that allow murder most foul up to the highest courts of the land, there is the stink of corruption and cronyism.
- Helen, norwich, 12/11/2008 11:11
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