Katie Hopkins Admits It’s Her Own Fault

The bad news is that pro-am motormouth Katie Hopkins is back in the Murdoch press today. The good news, though, is that not only has the rest of the press lifted the paywalled piece (see how that works, Rupe?), but also that Ms Hopkins’ latest excursion into the Fourth Estate is a campaign that has developed not necessarily to her advantage.

Viewers may still want to look away now

What the version of the article in the Mirror lets us know is that Hatey Katie did indeed have to sell her family home in Exeter in order to pay the legal costs of the defamation action brought against her by writer and campaigner Jack Monroe. Those costs eventually amounted to around £500,000. A cool half a million. And she could have settled the matter for a donation of £5,000 and an apology. But she doesn’t do apologies.

The Mirror confirms this singularly poor choice: “Asked what her worst business decision had been, she said: ‘Arguably, not settling the legal case brought against me. I could have settled by giving £5,000 to a migrant charity but chose not to’”. That means she ranks the defeat as worse than losing her Sun and Mail Online columns, and her LBC show.

And while the Mirror hints at why she might have lost any or all of those gigs - “Speaking to The Sunday Times, racist Hopkins whinged that speaking her mind lost her her career - having compared migrants crossing the Mediterranean in dinghies to ‘cockroaches’ and claiming she'd use gunships to prevent people from landing on European shores” - there is one incident they missed, which did for the LBC show all on its own.

After the Manchester Arena bombing, she went on a Twitter tirade that included the claim “We need a final solution”. It was Nazi-era language, an exhortation to genocide. Only after that, and a welter of complaints, did LBC decide that they could get along without her weekly show. She was sacked. Mail Online had, by that time, decided they would not renew her contract when it came up for renewal later the same year.

As to the idea that “speaking her mind cost her her career”, consider this. The likes of Allison Pearson, Richard Littlejohn, Quentin Letts (let’s not), Andrew Pierce, Amanda Bloody Platell, Jan Moir, Carole Malone and Julia Hartley Dooda manage to speak their minds and not get sacked. This is not some terrible conspiracy against free speech. It is her own fault for being an intolerant bigot, unable to express herself coherently.

Worse, there has been an intervention from I’m A Celebrity co-host Ant McPartlin on why Ms Hopkins did not feature more when she appeared on the show. “Katie Hopkins was in I'm A Celebrity but you wouldn't really remember her doing it, as she didn't really shine”. In other words, she was crap. So she didn’t get many offers to do more TV in the wake of her appearance. So her only career route was to become a columnist.

But she was too stupid to curb her hatred. So she lost those columns, and her LBC show. She’s still at it now, whinging at the Duchess of Sussex for being Not Totally White. She still doesn’t get it. Now she has to rent a house. And dodgy far-right money.

In any case, she’ll have been paid for her Sunday Times interview. Get the nanoviolin!

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