Laurence Fox is ‘a colour-blind liberal and anti-racist’, court told

Laurence Fox “is a colour-blind liberal” who doesn’t like racism, the High Court has been told.

The actor and politician is being sued by former Stonewall trustee Simon Blake and drag artist Crystal over a row on X, formerly known as Twitter, in October 2020.

Mr Fox called Mr Blake and the former RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant, whose real name is Colin Seymour, “paedophiles” in an exchange about a decision by Sainsbury’s to celebrate Black History Month and provide a safe space for its black employees.

After Mr Fox called for a boycott of the supermarket, the actor was called “a racist” by the pair and actress Nicola Thorp in their own posts on the platform.

The Reclaim Party founder, who denies being a racist, is counter-suing the trio over their tweets, claiming they damaged his reputation.

His barrister, Patrick Green KC, told the court: “The allegation of being ‘a racist’ will have been looked upon very seriously by many of Mr Fox’s actual and potential colleagues ... He is not a racist, he is a colour-blind liberal who dislikes racism, ‘progressive’ and identitarian politics.”

Fox has claimed he lost his acting agent in the aftermath and that on two occasions after the claim against him was filed, faeces was posted through his door.

Mr Green said in written submissions that there is “little doubt that Mr Fox’s reputation has actually suffered very considerably” since October 2020, particularly in the mind of his former agent Sue Latimer.

He added that Fox has also seen a decline in invitations to events for making professional appearances, in addition to a fall in acting roles.

The court was told that Fox received several queries about acting roles in 2020 before opportunities dwindled, including for a role in the HBO series Succession, and a project by Disney, thought to be the Obi-Wan series starring Ewan McGregor.

Opportunities for 2023 which did not come to fruition included an offer to appear on the show Banged Up, where high-profile figures, including EastEnders actor Sid Owen and Conservative MP Johnny Mercer, spent several days locked in a decommissioned prison, the court heard.

All four people in the claims appeared at the Royal Courts of Justice in London on Wednesday for the first day of the trial. Fox is expected to enter the witness box on Friday.

‘Ignoramus or an intelligent racist’

Lorna Skinner KC, representing Mr Blake, Mr Seymour and Ms Thorp, said the trio “honestly believed, and continue honestly to believe, that Mr Fox is a racist”.

In written submissions, the barrister said the 45-year-old “has made a number of highly controversial statements about race”, adding: “If and to the extent that Mr Fox has been harmed in his reputation, it is his own conduct and not the claimants’ comments on it that caused that harm.”

Ms Skinner highlighted several of Fox’s social media posts, including a June 2022 tweet of four pride flags arranged in the shape of a swastika.

“Such a disgusting post could only be made by a complete ignoramus or an intelligent racist with an agenda. Mr Fox is the latter,” she said.

The court was later told the politician tweeted a photo of himself in August 2023 “blacked up” and describing himself as someone who had “racially transitioned”.

Ms Skinner continued: “This is so offensive on so many levels that it is difficult to know where to start ... this is self-evidently a racist tweet.”

The barrister later told the court that Mr Blake and Mr Seymour had both faced serious harm to their reputations due to Fox’s tweets and would defend their posts as expressions of honest opinion.

However, Mr Green said in his written submissions that neither man “has suffered any actual, real-world consequences” due to the actor’s activity on social media.

The barrister said that the posts did not cause people to think worse of Mr Blake and Mr Seymour and that people did not believe they were paedophiles.

Instead, Mr Green said readers would have understood that Fox’s posts were a “retort to an allegation of racism” rather than a factual allegation.

He said it was accepted that abuse had been sent to Mr Blake and Mr Seymour on the platform previously known as Twitter, but that it had been from “trolls, a well-recognised species of Twitter user who have, at best, a ribald sense of humour and, at worst, deep personality disorders”.

The trial before Mrs Justice Collins Rice is due to conclude next week with a decision expected at a later date.

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