Columnist hit with six-figure libel bill after Twitter spat

KATIE HOPKINS, the controversial columnist, faces a six-figure libel bill after losing a court battle with a food blogger over two of her social media messages.

Jack Monroe, 28, from Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, complained that the messages posted in May 2015 accused her of “vandalising a war memorial and desecrating the memory of those who fought for her freedom, or of approving or condoning such behaviour”.

Yesterday, the former Apprentice candidate was ordered by a High Court judge to pay £24,000 damages and will have six-figure legal costs. The judge said Ms Hopkins does not suggest Ms Monroe did behave in either of these ways, but he found the tweet “meant that Ms Monroe condoned and approved of scrawling on war memorials”.

Hopkins’s lawyers had argued that her tweets did not bear the meanings complained of, were not defamatory and it had not been shown that they caused serious harm to Ms Monroe’s reputation.

The case arose following the daubing of a memorial to the women of the Second World War in Whitehall with the words “f--- Tory scum” during an anti-austerity demonstration.

Jonathan Price, for Hopkins, said she had “mistakenly” used Ms Monroe’s Twitter handle instead of that of another columnist who had said she was not troubled by the vandalism.

The judge ruled that the tweets had “not only caused Ms Monroe real and substantial distress, but also harm to her reputation which was serious”.

Mr Justice Warby ordered Hopkins to pay £107,000 in costs within 28 days, with the full figure yet to be assessed.

Ms Monroe said after the ruling: “There have been many times when I have almost given up and walked away. But I started something and I had to see it through, and I have done.”