Joey Barton facing Government and legal action over ‘dangerous’ social media posts
Joey Barton is facing both Government and legal action over his “dangerous” social media posts.
Stuart Andrew, the sports minister, has announced he would “look at” what could be done about Barton’s rants about women, one of whom has now instructed lawyers over “defamatory” abuse directed at her.
The past month has seen Barton embark on a series of increasingly personal attacks on X, formerly Twitter, primarily directed at women working in football.
Those culminated last week in posts comparing ITV pundits Eni Aluko and Lucy Ward to Fred and Rose West, two of Britain’s worst serial killers.
That prompted a statement from the broadcaster denouncing Barton, who responded by doubling down on his remarks.
The Government has now intervened after Andrew condemned Barton in Parliament on Tuesday.
“These are dangerous comments that open the floodgates for abuse and that’s not acceptable,” Andrew said, before revealing he would “look at” what powers were available to Ofcom to tackle Barton’s abuse under the Government’s new Online Safety Bill.
He also said he would “happily” raise the matter with social media companies to ask what action, if any, they were taking against Barton.
Andrew’s pledge came minutes after Barton was contacted on social media by a lawyer representing a woman he branded a “grifter”.
Barton became embroiled in a row with Louise Raw, a television and radio historian and writer, last week after she criticised him for comments he made about the involvement of his brother, Michael, in the racist murder of the black teenager Anthony Walker.
The spat prompted Barton to accuse her of being a “pure grifter” over a GoFundMe campaign she fronted last year to bring legal action against Jeremy Clarkson for an article the presenter wrote stating the Duchess of Sussex should be “made to parade naked through the streets”.
Barton’s posts about Raw have now seen him contacted by Lawrence Davies, the chief executive of Equal Justice, who replied on X: “Dear Mr Barton We act for Louise Raw. Your tweets about her are certainly defamatory and we will be writing to you formally in that regard later this week. Please provide an address for service, or your lawyers contact details. Please desist from further defamatory comment.
“I can confirm that all monies raised on GFM were transferred to my firm No monies were retained by my client No monies were used by her, other than for the purposes of obtaining legal advice Your allegation of grifting by her is entirely untrue and damages her reputation.”
Barton replied: “You can send it to my personal email address, http://mybigfathairya------.com Look forward to hearing from you.”
