There is no Starmer superinjuction

If you believe the less sane corners of social media, you’d think there were thousands of inunctions, superinjunctions, or “D-Notices” out there banning the UK media reporting this fact or that (a lot of them supposedly relate to covered-up Covid vaccines deaths, for example). In reality, superinjunctions are now almost never used, mostly because they don’t work. 

There was a time when various celebrities tried to use superinjunctions to cover up reporting of their extramarital affairs or other indiscretions. One problem with this approach was that for a superinjunction to work, it has to be communicated to all the major media outlets who might have to comply with it. You can’t follow a reporting restriction you don’t know about (though there are various rules meaning media outlets have to make reasonable steps to check for one).

Telling every news desk about salacious stuff then not allowing them to report it inevitably led to the stories spilling out in other ways. Sometimes a huge picture of the celebrity would appear next to a seemingly unrelated story about an affair, or a threesome, or drug use, or whatever – a cheeky hint to those in the know.

Sometimes foreign media would mysteriously find out about the story, and since they are not covered by UK courts, would be free to report the story entirely unaffected by the injunction. If there was actual public interest in the matter covered by the injunction, MPs could use parliamentary privilege to reveal it – as they did with the story of Trafigura dumping toxic waste off the Ivory Coast. 

In theory, the journalists who shared the information to make all of this possible would be subject to sanction – perhaps even prison – by the courts. But since thousands of journalists knew about the superinjunctions, this has in practice not been enforced. 

Thus, injunctions and superinjunctions of the sort that exist in the popular imagination basically don’t exist any more – they were a bad legal tactic that doesn’t work in the internet era. Reporting restrictions on criminal trials still exist, and there are other cases (like ZXC v Bloomberg) where UK courts value privacy far beyond the standard that other countries’ courts do, but the general rule is this: at least 99 times out of 100 you hear the word “injunction”, you can stop listening to the rest of what the person is saying.

The Keir Starmer injunction story is even stupider because politicians struggled to get injunctions even back in the era where they were popular: because politicians seek election, and are subject to lots of rules governing their conduct, much more of what they do qualify as being in the public interest.

Why, then, are whispers of the Starmer superinjunction so prevalent? There are a few reasons.

One is that the newish owner of the social media network formerly known as Twitter actively rewards grifters who pose as journalists with blue ticks and social media monetisation. You are much likelier to go viral with a made-up bullshit claim from “sources” than news which has to stay grounded in mundane reality. Because the new Twitter leans right, made-up shit that makes right-wing idiots feel knowledgeable is guaranteed to go viral.

Reason two is that Westminster is not so detached from this social media ecosystem as it would like to pretend to be. The grifter-to-mainstream journalist pipeline is real: if you can get clicks and get attention, while staying just on the right side of defamation law, you have a bright career ahead of you. Hint at restrictions and you can make it big.

The third reason relates to the first two, but is broader: it’s just old-school homophobia. Lord Alli is gay, and has funded tens of thousands of pounds worth of clothes for the prime minister (and his wife, and other MPs, which is left out of this narrative because it doesn’t fit).

At this point, people pushing bullshit ask a question with mock incredulity: “well what kind of man lets another man buy his clothes?”, as if the situation of a political leader isn’t quite different from ‘normal’ life. “Queer Starmer” trended on Twitter for most of the weekend as a result of this nonsense – turning a legitimate story about ill-advised freebies into seedy bullshit, given just enough spice to catch on further by the idea it was a secret story only insiders knew, because “the MSM” were banned from telling it.

None of this particularly matters on its own, except for what it says about the terminally online. The least-informed people with the worst media literacy skills are the ones who think they have access to the best information. People who believe any shit that agrees with their priors think they have a sophisticated understanding of the media. 

And people who would flunk out of even the most rudimentary media legal training think they understand the use of injunctions or superinjunctions. In the words of Knives Out’s Benoit Blanc: no, it’s just dumb.