Carole Cadwalladr should now return her Orwell Prize

A small but significant event has just occurred. This morning the legal case between Arron Banks and the journalist Carole Cadwalladr was due to start. The case came about because of Cadwalladr’s claim that Arron Banks – who was a founder of the Leave.EU campaign (the non-official Leave campaign) – was offered money by the Russians. Cadwalladr has been going around for years making these and other unfounded accusations in every forum and on every platform she can manage. It is not as though her campaign has been obscure. The Observer newspaper has supported her, and as her entirely unsubstantiated claims grew, she was shamefully awarded the Orwell Prize for journalism.

Although she claimed to see Russian agents everywhere it was finally Banks who decided to sue Cadwalladr. She crowdfunded – posing as the underdog truth-teller against the big rich Russian agent – and then last night (having rinsed her supporters for cash till the last minute) she pulled out of the hearing. As Guido reports here she conceded that she had no evidence and could not go ahead with the case. She is now reportedly forced to pay a first down-payment of £62,000 in costs, with more to come.

Perhaps it is necessary to say at this point that I have never met either Banks or Cadwalladr and have no special love for either of them. But what has just happened is something that should cause a certain ripple of consequences.

Firstly, it should be noted that the campaign of defamation which Cadwalladr has engaged in over recent years has been poisonous. I have read many of her unsourced, unsubstantiated claims with amazement that they were ever published. For years she has pumped these claims about Russian agents and Russian money throughout our body politic.