on the Rachel Riley / Laura Murray controversy: this will not have lasting implications for the discourse. this is a perfectly ordinary application of the existing rules of defamation, and in the UK we have an incredibly high threshold for defamatory content anyway

all the preliminary hearing did was establish what category each part of the tweet fell into (opinion vs fact) so that all parties know the rules of the game going forwards in order to speed up the eventual trial. A defence can still be raised. nobody has won or lost yet.

Truth is a defence. The statement being a personal opinion is a defence. So no, nobody is ever going to get sued for calling another person stupid.

the issue here is that there was an alleged misstatement of FACT, not opinion, which is defamatory unless it can be proven to be true. the ‘stupid and dangerous’ part of the tweet became allegedly defamatory through being linked to an alleged misstatement of fact