Twitter users are learning what a dangerous weapon they have at their fingertips, as Sally Bercow's 46-character tweet shows
Mr Justice Tugendhat concluded the reasonable reader would understand Sally Bercow’s tweet about Lord McAlpine, right, as insincere and ironical. Photograph: PA
The Speaker's wife has learned the hard way that while her husband and his fellow MPs make the law, it is the judges who interpret and apply it.
The outcome of Lord McAlpine's libel case against Sally Bercow is likely to have provided her with an expensive lesson on the British constitution.
While it's possible that she was represented on a no win, no fee basis by her solicitors Carter-Ruck and the two barristers who appeared for her at the high court earlier in the month, she will certainly have to pay Lord McAlpine's legal fees unless she was fortunate enough to have obtained insurance.
We know that Bercow, above arriving at court, had made two offers of compensation that were rejected by McAlpine. So it's clear that the undisclosed, agreed damages were higher than she had hoped.
The only issue Mr Justice Tugendhat was asked to decide was the meaning of Bercow's tweet – which took a mere 46 keystrokes. People unfamiliar with modern social media may not have understood her question – "Why is Lord McAlpine trending?" Nor would they have known why she typed the words *innocent face* between asterisks. But, as the judge said, Twitter users would.
As Tugendhat helpfully explained, "innocent face" was to be read as a stage direction. Readers were to imagine that they could see an expression of innocence on Bercow's face. But what did that expression mean?
Bercow claimed it was a deadpan look. She had simply noticed in all innocence that McAlpine's name was circulating widely on Twitter – "trending", as it's called – and was hoping someone would tell her why. However, McAlpine argued Bercow was using irony – that "innocent face" was meant to be read as the opposite of its literal meaning.
The judge decided the reasonable reader would understand Bercow's words as insincere and ironical."There is no sensible reason for including those words in the tweet if they are to be taken as meaning that the defendant simply wants to know the answer to a factual question," he explained.
What reason was Bercow suggesting for the fact that McAlpine's name was trending? Tugendhat said readers would infer that she had provided the last piece in the jigsaw: she was saying McAlpine fitted the description of a leading Conservative politician who had been wrongly accused by the BBC of child abuse.
So the tweet – just seven words and some punctuation – meant McAlpine was a paedophile who was guilty of sexually abusing boys in his care. But it was accepted by Bercow and by the man who had made the original complaint to the BBC, as well as by the public at large, that McAlpine was entirely innocent of the abuse that had been committed at care homes in Wales. The tweet was seriously defamatory and Bercow was left without a defence to the libel action brought by McAlpine.
The law of defamation is well known to those who write for a living. One hopes Twitter users are beginning to learn what a powerful and potentially dangerous weapon they have at their fingertips. A tweet is more like a broadcast than an email and is subject to the law of libel in the same way. It was Bercow herself who drew the obvious conclusion: "Today's ruling should be seen as a warning to all social media users."