Katie Hopkins Blackmail Clanger

What a difference a week makes: seven days ago, pro-am motormouth Katie Hopkins had had time to absorb the scale of her libel loss to writer and campaigner Jack Monroe, and as a result of whatever thought process goes on inside her head had decided that she would be appealing the ruling handed down the week before. But now, as a result of yet another episode of foot in mouth, she is looking at another legal action.

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How this came about can be explained quite simply: Ms Hopkins had appeared on Jodie Marsh’s online chat show, and rather than telling her host that she would rather not make things worse for herself and so would pass on any questions on the libel case, thanks and all that, she decided of her own volition to launch into yet another conspiracy theory based rant that would have been best cut from the final release.

Interestingly, the coverage is restricted to the Mirror - perhaps other papers, and Mail Online, which hosts a regular column from her, have decided that without having them legalled, Hatey Katie’s comments are potentially too hot to handle - and here we read that Ms Hopkins ”defended her actions against Jack Monroe and explained why she allowed the case to go to court”. And there was more.

Jack Monroe

“Sat in bed with the glamour model, the MailOnline columnist said: ‘After two and a half hours I realised the tweet was wrong, so I deleted it. Then I made a formal retraction that said 'I was wrong' using the Twitter handle that her solicitors gave me. So I thought that was enough … The apology was always attached to a £5,000 payout to a migrant charity. I'd be happy to apologise, but show me the damage - show me the job contract you'd lost as a result of my tweet”. Ah, the old Kelvin McFilth Elton John defence. Not clever.

It gets worse: the headline of the article tells “Katie Hopkins speaks for the first time about losing libel case - claiming she was BLACKMAILED by Jack Monroe”. It has to be assumed that this refers to the suggestion from Mx Monroe that Ms Hopkins should couple an apology with a £5,000 donation to a migrant charity.

But that is not the full story: Ms Hopkins could, as I showed recently, have said sorry at a rather earlier stage in proceedings and there would have been no action at all. Moreover, the idea that Hatey Katie had been subject to blackmail was put forward as part of her court defence. It was debunked during the proceedings which ended with Ms Hopkins facing a damages and costs bill not unadjacent to £650,000.

And I have yet worse news for Mail Online’s premier hate speech practitioner: lawyers are, as I type, picking over Hatey Katie’s latest rant with a view to possible further action. The only thing she has in her favour is that she is not in contempt of court - yet. But the idea that she is going to successfully appeal the libel judgment, a slim possibility even if she had kept her trap shut, is now disappearing over the horizon.

Katie Hopkins’ hate fests were always going to end in court, and expensively. The only thing that has changed is that the expense may have increased. Bye bye Katie Hopkins.