How Lawyers Killed Labour’s Anti-Slapp Bill in London 2026

Key Points

• Legislative Stall: Comprehensive anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) legislation has been shelved by the Labour government following an intense, discreet lobbying campaign.
• The Lobbyists: The Society of Media Lawyers (SML), representing elite firms like Carter-Ruck and Mishcon de Reya, successfully argued that the “Slapp narrative” was a media-driven exaggeration.
• Oligarch Tactics: Freelance journalists and whistleblowers continue to face financial ruin from libel suits brought by wealthy individuals, including property tycoon Claudio Di Giovanni.
• Government Reversal: Despite Keir Starmer’s earlier pledges to protect investigative journalism, anti-SLAPP measures were reportedly removed from the Civil Justice and Courts Bill in early 2026.
• Global Reputation: Critics argue that the failure to legislate cements London’s status as the “libel capital of the world,” where legal systems are weaponised to silence public interest reporting.

South London (South London News) May 15, 2026 Cormac Kehoe, a 28-year-old freelance reporter, was navigating the semi-arid peaks of Málaga last August when a notification on his phone disrupted his rare holiday. A county court in Bromley had ordered him to pay £10,000 for “defamation, aggravated harm and loss of business.” As reported by the New Statesman and Democracy for Sale, Kehoe was unaware that a formal libel claim had even been initiated. The claimant was Claudio Di Giovanni, an Italian businessman whose property empire Kehoe had recently investigated for The Londoner website.

The nightmare intensified when Di Giovanni filed a secondary suit demanding £250,000 in damages. “It’s a nightmare, really,” Kehoe told reporters, describing the prospect of financial ruin while merely attempting to take a week off from work. Cases like these were supposed to be historical footnotes following the government’s 2022 promise to crack down on “lawfare.” However, a series of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests have now revealed how a “discreet but highly effective” lobbying blitz by London’s most expensive libel lawyers effectively strangled the proposed reforms.

How did the Society of Media Lawyers influence Downing Street?

The Society of Media Lawyers (SML) serves as a quiet but powerful collective of firms that have, in the past, represented figures ranging from Russian oligarchs to the disgraced Tory peer Michelle Mone.

According to investigative work by Simon Lock and Lawrence Marzouk of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), the SML used private meetings with government officials to cast their wealthy clients as “underdogs” in a “David and Goliath” battle against the press.

Documents obtained via FOI show the SML argued that the scale of Slapp litigation was being “overstated” by a media industry looking to “latch on to claims by oligarchs.”

The group even went as far as to suggest that the government should focus more on press wrongdoing, such as phone-hacking and “daily intrusion.”

As noted by Press Gazette, the SML’s lobbying appears to have borne significant fruit; in February 2026, comprehensive anti-Slapp measures were quietly dropped from the Civil Justice and Courts Bill.

A source close to the government’s discussions, quoted by the New Statesman, claimed:

“The Carter-Rucks of this world have successfully scared the civil servants into thinking that it’s too difficult to do anything about Slapps.”

In response to this characterisation, the law firm Carter-Ruck stated to investigators that they “would do nothing of the sort,” adding that they “welcome a sensible and balanced debate” but maintain that current issues are properly a matter of public interest.

What is the history of London as the ‘Libel Capital of the World’?

The roots of this legal phenomenon reach back to the post-war era, pioneered by Peter Carter-Ruck. He transformed the Libel Act of 1843 into a lucrative tool for the elite.

One of the most famous early examples involved Randolph Churchill in 1963, who sued every person associated with Private Eye to prevent them from publishing a biography that might contain unfavourable details.

The modern “gold rush” for libel lawyers solidified in the 1990s. In a landmark case, the House of Lords allowed Russian oligarchs Boris Berezovsky and Nikolai Glushkov to sue Forbes magazine in London, despite the publication having a tiny UK circulation of fewer than 2,000 copies.

This opened the “floodgates for a wave of libel tourism,” where the UK legal system presumes a statement is false until the defendant proves it true—a reversal of the standard “innocent until proven guilty” burden of proof.

Why did the Labour Government retreat on its reform promises?

When Vladimir Putin’s tanks entered Ukraine in 2022, the optics of London lawyers defending Russian interests became a political liability. Then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised to end the “lawfare” used by “Putin’s henchmen.” Even Keir Starmer, upon taking office, pledged to stop

“powerful people using Slapps to intimidate journalists.”

Yet, as the SML ramped up its correspondence with the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), the political will seemed to evaporate. Charlotte Leslie, a former Tory MP who famously defeated a defamation claim from Conservative donor Mohamed Amersi, told reporters that the FOI documents expose a legal sector

“in complete denial about the threat they have posed to freedom of speech.”

The SML defended its actions to the New Statesman, asserting that it has written only a “very limited number of letters” to provide “expert views.”

They rejected the notion of being in “denial,” calling their position “informed, expert and measured.”

Who are the current victims of ongoing Slapp litigation?

The human cost of this legislative delay is becoming increasingly visible. Beyond Cormac Kehoe, the investigative outlet Bellingcat and its founder Eliot Higgins have faced significant hurdles.

As reported by Democracy for Sale, Higgins was left with £70,000 in costs after a suit brought by the late Yevgeny Prigozhin—the founder of the Wagner Group—collapsed only when the law firm, Discreet Law, withdrew following the invasion of Ukraine.

Furthermore, The Post (a Mill Media publication) is currently defending a claim from Di Giovanni. In an article published on May 15, 2026, the editor of The Post noted that they are facing three court dates in three months, with expected costs exceeding £100,000.

They highlighted the “chilling effect” of such suits, noting that other national newspapers have reportedly pulled stories about wealthy businessmen due to “sabre-rattling” by specialist defamation KCs.

Background of the Anti-Slapp Development

The term SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) was coined to describe legal actions that are not necessarily intended to win on merit, but to exhaust the defendant’s financial and emotional resources. In the UK, the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 introduced the first formal anti-Slapp provisions, but these were strictly limited to cases involving reporting on economic crimes. Campaigners, including the UK Anti-Slapp Coalition, argued that this left a massive loophole for cases involving human rights, environmental issues, and sexual abuse allegations.

The proposed Civil Justice and Courts Bill of 2025/2026 was intended to close this gap by applying protections to all matters of public interest. The current development marks a significant setback for these protections, as the broader “universal” anti-Slapp clause was removed following the legal industry’s intervention.

Prediction: How This Affects Journalists and Whistleblowers

The shelving of comprehensive anti-Slapp laws is likely to result in an immediate and sustained “chilling effect” across the British media landscape. For freelance journalists and small independent newsrooms, the risk of personal financial ruin—as seen in the Cormac Kehoe case—will make investigative projects into the “super-rich” or “oligarch” classes virtually impossible to insure or justify.

For the audience of whistleblowers and activists, this development signals that the UK remains a “safe haven” for those with the capital to suppress truth. We can predict a rise in “pre-publication threats,” where wealthy individuals use high-fee law firms to kill stories before they ever reach the public eye. Unless the government reintroduces these measures, the UK’s global reputation for judicial integrity will likely continue to decline, while the cost of defending the truth remains a luxury only the wealthy can afford.