SLAPPs: Britain’s free speech crisis

May 31, 2026

Lionel Barber: There remains a serious imbalance in power in Britain between wealthy claimants and financially strapped media organisations/brave substackers who end up being defendants. They can be tied up in legal knots when a SLAPPs suit or threatening letter lands on their desks. It is an injustice hiding in plain sight, an affront to a healthy liberal democracy…