So Tommy Robinson has lost his libel case over claims he made about a Syrian boy in a Northern town. Mr Robinson is now liable for damages of £100k to be paid to the Syrian boy. This result was very much on the cards and for several reasons.

The first is that Mr Robinson made the claims without being absolutely sure that he could be able to back them up in court. He made the claim that the Syrian boy was carrying out attacks on young girls but could not provide sufficient evidence to back up his claim.

The second reason is that being the defendant in a libel case in the English courts is not a position that anybody should want to be in. This is because there is the perception that the English courts take libel very very seriously and it is much more likely that the court will find for the plaintiff rather than the defendant and that libel awards are extremely high and punitive. This is why the English courts have become the go to place for those with the significant resources needed to bring a libel case against either an individual or a publication. Nick Cohen has an excellent article that was published in The Critic magazine about the use by foreign nationals of the English libel courts to counter or silence those who have criticised powerful people.

A litigant in person, which Mr Robinson was as he represented himself, is always going to be at a disadvantage in a libel case especially as the plaintiff in this case was backed up by experienced lawyers paid for by crowdfunding. It is difficult if not impossible to defend a libel case without substantial legal and technical backing. The famous Irving vs Penguin books case of 2000 where the now discredited historical writer David Irving lost a defamation case against Penguin books, was one of those cases that required legal and historical experts to be engaged, at great cost by the defendant in order to show that David Irving’s writings about the Nazis were fundamentally flawed.

As someone who believes that freedom of speech rights needs to be strengthened not weakened I can see how the English libel laws can be used and abused to attack the right of British subjects to speak freely and to shield foreign oligarchs from criticism. Of course, as the court found in Mr Robinson’s case, he made statements without the evidence to back them up, but this case also highlights the need for reform of English libel laws. Personally I’d like to see the libel laws amended to make them more like those in the United States where the plaintiff needs to prove that the false statements have been made with malice. A person can make a wrong claim based on evidence that they may have believed at the time was accurate and maybe in this digital age where information travels much more swiftly than it did in the past, that should be a defence in the English courts as well as the US ones?