Court statement

I accept the Court’s judgment that my comments about John Ware in a live radio programme on the Jeremy Vine show were defamatory. I should not have asserted that the BBC had taken action against Mr Ware in connection with allegations he has engaged in Islamophobia and extreme far right and/or racist politics. Nor that this was in any way reflected in his journalistic work.

I now accept these allegations to be untrue. JVL and I have apologised unreservedly to Mr Ware and explained that I spoke in the way that I did because I was so angry at the content of the “Is Labour Antisemitic programme” for which Mr Ware was the reporter.