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By Michael Smith
The Spectator, in pieces by global polemicist Douglas Murray,
and others, ventilates anti-Irish prejudices by imputing
antisemitism where it does not exist
I
n August and September 2025 The
Spectator magazine published two
columns alleging that Ireland’s
policy toward Gaza was animated
by antisemitism. One, Douglas
Murray’s ‘The Oppression of Sally Rooney’
(23 August 2025), accused Ireland of
adopting “a simplistic and ill-informed
positio...with a dose of good old Irish
anti-Semitism”. The other, by Jake Wallis
Simons, suggested Ireland had chosen
“the side that goes for the Jews”. Both
presented these assertions as fact, not
opinion, and neither oered evidence.
In September 2025 I complained to
the UK’s Independent Press Standards
Organisation (IPSO) under Clause 1 of the
Editors’ Code, which requires publications
to take care not to publish inaccurate or
misleading information and to distinguish
clearly between comment, conjecture
and fact. IPSO declined to investigate,
asserting that both articles were
“polemical opinion pieces” written in the
first person and therefore outside Clause
1. That reasoning not only misreads the
Code; it strips IPSO’s regulatory purpose
of meaning.
Substance of the articles
Murray’s column restated his usual thesis
that Ireland revels in grievance and now
“adopts” the Palestinians as kin. His key
factual claims were:
That Irish neutrality during the Second
World War proved Ireland “found it
impossible to decide which side to come
down on”.
That “the current Irish decision to draw a
simplistic and ill-informed position on the
Israel-Palestine conflict...allows a certain
type of Irish person the opportunity to be
a sort of bigger sibling in suering to the
The Vexed Hater II:
UK Press Standards body (IPSO) abdicated
duty to assess truth about Irish antisemitism
His writing is praised
by conservatives but
disputed by most
academics for its
treatment of Islam
and immigration.
He is dangerously
articulate.
NEWS
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Palestinians, with the side-oering of a
dose of good old Irish anti-Semitism”.
Both are verifiable propositions,
not subjective impressions. The first
misrepresents a well-documented
historical record: Ireland’s neutrality
was accompanied by extensive Allied
cooperation — the Donegal Corridor, Plan W,
intelligence sharing, D-Day weather reports
from Blacksod Bay, and the enlistment of
tens of thousands of Irish volunteers in
British forces. To characterise this as moral
equivalence with Nazism is inaccurate by
omission.
The second claim imputes racial animus
to a sovereign state and its electorate.
No source, citation, or factual basis was
oered. The allegation is contradicted by
ocial Irish policy, by the IHRA definition
of antisemitism that Ireland itself
adopted last year, and by international
determinations that righteousness about
Israel’s misconduct in the war in Gaza
rests on humanitarian-law concerns, not
prejudice.
Simons’s accompanying piece repeated
the same motif, asserting that Ireland had
chosen “the side that goes for the Jews”.
Again, a factual assertion about motive,
devoid of evidence.
Significance of claims
These statements appeared amid an
international crisis in which misinformation
already inflamed communal tensions.
Labelling an EU member state “antisemitic”
for invoking international law corrodes the
distinction between legitimate political
critique and bigotry. It also distorts public
understanding of Ireland’s wartime record
and its present diplomacy. A responsible
press regulator should, at minimum,
require evidence for such allegations or
ensure that readers can recognise them as
opinion. IPSO did neither.
IPSO’s Decision and my pre-
action letter
On 5 December 2025, IPSO’s Complaints
Committee upheld its sta’s earlier
rejection, stating that the articles “were
clearly distinguished as polemical opinion
pieces – both written in first person and
clearly attributed to the writers”. It oered
no further reasoning.
On 19 December 2025 I issued a Letter
Before Claim under the Pre-Action Protocol
for Judicial Review, addressed to IPSO and
its Complaints Ocer. Ms Davina Wong.
I withdrew the second article and any
reliance on Clause 1(i) accuracy, limiting
the challenge to Clause 1(iv): IPSO’s failure
to distinguish between fact and comment
and to give reasons.
The letter alleged:
Ground 1: failure to give reasons;
Ground 2: irrationality (Wednesbury
unreasonableness) in treating first-person
tone as dispositive;
Ground 3: misinterpretation of Clause
1(iv);
Ground 4: fettering of discretion by
adopting a blanket rule that “first-person =
opinion”; and
Ground 5: failure to consider relevant
factors such as the seriousness of racism
allegations and the absence of evidence.
It sought a quashing order, a lawful
reconsideration, disclosure of Committee
records, and confirmation of IPSO’s address
for service.
IPSO’s Solicitors’ Reply
(Level Law, 13 January
2026)
IPSO instructed Level Law to respond. Their
letter, written on behalf of the regulator,
makes the following points:
First, they assert that my characterisation
of the decision is wrong: the Committee
did consider the complaint but found no
possible breach “for the reasons previously
provided”. They contend that repeating the
sta’s rationale satisfies the duty to give
reasons.
Second, they deny irrationality, arguing
that the passage complained of was “clearly
distinguished as opinion… as the article
was written in the first person and the view
clearly attributed to the writer”. They claim
the precedent Various v The Star (04272-24)
is irrelevant because that case concerned a
letter asserting “an absolute fact,” whereas
The Spectator piece was opinion.
Third, they deny misdirection, quoting
Clause 1(iv) verbatim and insisting
the passage “was clearly identified as
comment”. They call my claim of an
unlawful blanket policy “misconceived”,
assert that the Committee considered my
correspondence in full, refuse disclosure,
and conclude that my claim is “without
merit”.
Finally, they advise that I seek specialist
legal advice before issuing proceedings
and note that costs may follow.
Evaluation of IPSO’s reply
IPSO’s defence is procedurally tidy but
analytically hollow.
(1) Reasons
Merely adopting the Complaints Team’s
email does not demonstrate that the
Committee considered the matter. In Ewing
v IPSO [2017], the High Court confirmed
IPSO’s amenability to judicial review
precisely because it exercises a public
regulatory function. Public bodies must give
reasons adequate for a court to understand
their logic. A formulaic repetition of earlier
language is not a reasoned decision under
South Bucks DC v Porter (No 2) [2004].
(2) Clause 1(iv)
Level Law’s reliance on authorship style
— “written in the first person” — confirms
the misinterpretation. Clause 1(iv)
requires the press to distinguish clearly
between comment, conjecture and fact as
perceived by a reasonable reader. It says
nothing about grammatical person. IPSO’s
approach substitutes a form-based test for
a substance-based one, allowing factual
allegations to be immunised by tone. That
is the very error identified in my letter.
(3) Precedent: Various v The Star (04272-24)
In that 2024 ruling, IPSO upheld a complaint
because a statement asserted as “absolute
fact” in a letters column was misleading.
The principle is that opinion context does
not exempt factual assertions from Clause
1. IPSO’s current stance contradicts its own
precedent, rendering its decision irrational
and inconsistent.
(4) Consideration of relevance
The claim that the Committee “had sight
of all correspondence” is no evidence that
Douglas Murray takes
on Ireland’s addiction to
having been oppressed
Irish
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it considered the factual nature of the
allegations, their gravity, or the absence
of evidence. The Tameside duty requires
genuine consideration, not passive receipt.
(5) Fettering of discretion
By treating all first-person polemics as
opinion, IPSO has adopted a de facto
blanket rule excluding such writing from
scrutiny. That constitutes an unlawful fetter
on discretion and subverts the Code’s case-
by-case approach.
The broader regulatory Issue
IPSO’s position eectively dismantles
Clause 1. If a journalist can accuse a
government of racism yet escape review by
writing “I think,” then accuracy standards
become optional. The Code’s purpose —
to protect the public from misinformation
— is lost. The regulator becomes a shield
for polemicists rather than a guardian of
standards.
This is not about suppressing opinion. It is
about ensuring that statements presented
as fact are supported by evidence or at least
identified as conjecture. The Spectator
columns failed that test, and IPSO’s
abdication compounds the harm.
Levelling down
Level Law, which represents IPSO, is ranked
in Chambers & Partners and Legal 500 for
defamation and regulatory work. Within its
niche it is competent and well regarded. Its
lawyers are not negligent; they are executing
IPSO’s instructions within the limits of its
brief. But the very polish of the response
underscores the problem: a regulator
outsourcing its defence to a private media
firm whose culture is one of damage control
not public accountability. The result is
a procedural façade of professionalism
masking an analytical void.
The Administrative-Law
perspective
Judicial review does not re-decide
complaints; it examines whether a decision
was lawful, rational, and procedurally fair.
IPSO’s decision fails each test:
Lawfulness: it misapplied Clause 1(iv) by
treating grammatical form as determinative;
Rationality: its logic is circular (“first-
person = opinion = no breach”);
Fairness: it gave no intelligible reasons
and ignored relevant material.
Such defects satisfy the Wednesbury
standard of unreasonableness—no
reasonable regulator, properly directing
itself, could have reached this conclusion
on the evidence before it.
Judicial deference in
reviews to decisions of non-
governmental bodies
Judicial review of IPSO decisions is rare
but not impossible. Courts have confirmed
IPSO’s reviewability yet intervene only
for clear public-law error. This case has
a stronger-than-average procedural
foundation: a total absence of reasoning
and a demonstrable misapplication of the
Code.
Even if full relief were not granted,
the claim could secure a concession or
reconsideration. That, practically, would
vindicate the principle that IPSO must give
reasons and apply Clause 1(iv) properly. I
am considering my legal position. Hard.
The remedy sought
A proportionate outcome would be
simple: The Spectator should publish a
correction acknowledging that allegations
of “Irish antisemitism” were un-evidenced
opinions, not substantiated facts, and
that Ireland’s wartime neutrality involved
material cooperation with the Allies. Such a
clarification would not curb free expression;
it would restore factual integrity.
At the regulatory level, IPSO should
amend its guidance to state explicitly that
first-person or “polemical” presentation
does not exempt factual content from
scrutiny under Clause 1.
The principle
The IPSO correspondence illustrates a
failure of principle. The regulator was
created to maintain standards after the
Leveson Report (2012); instead, it has
become a licensing body for invective.
Murray’s column transformed a nation’s
moral stance into an ethnic smear. IPSO’s
response transformed the Editors’ Code
into a sterile figleaf. When a regulator
excuses factual distortion by reclassifying it
as opinion, it betrays both the press and the
public. The issue is larger than one article
or one author. It is about whether evidence,
truth, and accountability still bind British
journalism at all, especially in fraught and
fractious times.
Murray believes all starving Gazan pictures are miscaptioned
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