Trump’s paper tiger: he has launched a lawsuit against the BBC – that he can’t win
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Why would Donald Trump sue the BBC for defamation and violating trade practices when he knows he can’t win?
That’s the big question raised by his big decision today (December 16, 2025).
Here’s the BBC:
“The BBC has said it will defend itself against a $5bn (£3.7bn) lawsuit filed by US President Donald Trump over an edit of his 6 January 2021 speech in a Panorama documentary.
“Trump accused the broadcaster of defamation and of violating a trade practices law, according to court documents filed in Florida.
“The BBC apologised to him last month, but rejected his demands for compensation and disagreed there was a “basis for a defamation claim”.
“Trump’s legal team accused the BBC of defaming him by “intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively doctoring his speech”.”
Lawyers for the BBC “said [it] did not have the rights to – and did not – distribute the Panorama programme on its US channels. While the documentary was available on BBC iPlayer, it was restricted to viewers in the UK.
“Trump’s lawsuit cites agreements the BBC had with other distributors to show content, specifically one with a third-party media corporation, Blue Ant Media, that allegedly had licensing rights to distribute the programme “in North America, including Florida”.
“Blue Ant confirmed it had acquired the distribution rights, but said none of the company’s buyers had aired the documentary in the US. It added that the version of the documentary it received “did not include the edit in question” as the international version had been “cut down in a number of places for time”.
“Blue Ant is not named as a defendant in the case.
“The lawsuit also claims people in Florida may have accessed the programme using a virtual private network (VPN) or via the streaming service BritBox.”
It’s actually $10 billion in total. Trump is suing on two counts.
I have already published an article explaining why Trump is unlikely to win his case.
And I was…
Right or wrong? To find out, head over to The Whip Line.
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Trump took Starmer for a fool over £31bn tech ‘deal’ – and he was right
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The United States has halted a £31 billion “tech prosperity deal” with the United Kingdom – because the UK has been slow to lower its standards to US levels.
The Guardian tells us:
“US tech companies pledged to spend billions in the UK, including a £22bn investment from Microsoft and £5bn from Google. But Washington has paused the implementation of the agreement, citing a lack of progress from the UK in lowering trade barriers in other areas.
“[The New York Times] said Trump’s administration was unhappy about the UK continuing to levy a digital services tax on American tech companies and its food safety rules, which bar the export of certain agricultural products.”
An honest future-direction message
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Have the United States done the dirty on the UK? Well, no – not in any unusual or treacherous sense. What’s happening is colder, more structural, and frankly more revealing than that.
This was never a binding investment deal in the way it was sold to the UK by Keir Starmer.
It was a conditional political framework dressed up as a “£31bn pledge”, and the conditions were always explicit in the small print.
I’ve written a full analysis of this – to read it, head over to The Whip Line.
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Streeting’s hypocrisy: he is well-paid but denounces doctors’ demand as ‘self-indulgent’
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Resident doctors have voted overwhelmingly to reject the latest “last ditch” government pay-and-conditions offer and go ahead with a threat to strike.
Here’s The Guardian:
“NHS bosses are anxious about how hospital services will cope with what will be the 14th stoppage resident – formerly junior – doctors have staged since March 2023 when it is already struggling to cope with a fast-growing “flu-nami”. They have had to reschedule an estimated 38,500 outpatient appointments and treatments, including surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy for cancer.”
[But hasn’t the NHS already said it is cancelling appointments because it doesn’t have enough funding to cover them?]
“The Patients Association called for third-party arbitration after resident doctors voted 83% to 17% against a deal the BMA called “too little, too late”. They had voted in a survey of opinion about an offer that, if accepted, would have led to the doctors’ union calling off their five-day walkout, which will now start as planned at 7am on Wednesday.
“The doctors’ rejection triggered a new round of verbal hostilities. Streeting decried resident medics for taking part in “self-indulgent, irresponsible and dangerous” industrial action. Their pursuit of a 26% pay rise, having already seen their salaries increase by 28.9% since 2022, was “a fantasy demand”.
“His offer would have doubled the number of training places early careers doctors can apply for from 2,000 to 4,000, but did not include a further pay rise for 2025-26, which he has ruled out.
“In a direct appeal to resident doctors, Streeting asked them to work normally this week, despite the union’s stance. “Abandoning your patients in their hour of greatest need goes against everything a career in medicine is meant to be about.”
“But the BMA hit back. In a comment piece for the Guardian the chair of the BMA resident doctors committee decried “government spin” about the offer, said it would not result in the NHS having any more doctors and accused Streeting of using “disrespectful language” about them.”
Looking at the politicians’ rhetoric, I’m reminded of the fact that resident doctors are only trying to get their pay back to real-terms parity with what they had in 2010 – something that MPs like Wes Streeting have always enjoyed.
An honest future-direction message
“Vox Political is nearing the end of its fourteenth year, and I want to be honest with you: the online advertising model that kept the site free to read has deteriorated so sharply that it can no longer sustain the work.
This is not a reflection on the readership; it is a structural shift affecting small publishers everywhere.
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In that context, Streeting’s language seems not just harsh but profoundly hypocritical.
Resident doctors are not asking for preferential treatment; they are asking to undo a long, sustained real-terms pay erosion that dates back to 2010.
MPs, including Streeting himself, were insulated from that experience. Parliamentary pay has been protected, uprated, and decoupled from the kind of real-terms collapse imposed on much of the public sector.
When he calls doctors’ demands a “fantasy” while enjoying exactly the protection they are seeking to restore, it reads as moralising from a position of privilege.
That’s what makes phrases like “self-indulgent, irresponsible and dangerous” land so awkwardly. They invert responsibility.
The strike is framed as a sudden abdication of duty, when in reality it is the predictable outcome of years of underpayment, workforce bottlenecks, and ministers refusing to engage seriously until the system is already in crisis.
Doctors are accused of “abandoning patients”, while the political class that presided over understaffing, training shortages and collapsing morale presents itself as the guardian of patient safety.
There is also a class and power dynamic at work.
Streeting’s rhetoric assumes that doctors’ labour is a moral calling that should override material reality, while MPs’ labour is treated as something that must always be fairly remunerated to attract “talent”.
When resident doctors assert the same logic for themselves, they are scolded for greed. That double standard is hard to miss.
In that light, Streeting doesn’t sound like a steward of a battered health service trying to resolve a dispute.
He sounds like a politician defending an indefensible settlement by appealing to guilt, duty and fear, while quietly relying on the fact that he has never had to live with the consequences of the pay restraint he demands others accept.
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Where’s the mystery over cuts to disability benefits? We know where they’ll fall – don’t we?
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The government is being criticised for failing to clarify how £2 billion of cuts to disability benefits will be achieved.
But don’t we already know what’s planned – from the Labour government’s attempt to shave £5 billion from disability benefits earlier this year?
Dsisability News Service is saying:
“The government has refused to explain the impact that last week’s budget will have on disabled people who receive benefits, despite repeated requests for clarity over cuts of up to £580 million a year.
“The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Treasury have both failed to provide any details of the cuts to spending on disability benefits of nearly £2 billion over five years.
“The Treasury initially claimed that the budget documents were not announcing new policies, but were “just costing existing plans from planned welfare reforms – so nothing new from this”.”
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Rather than quietly winding down, I’m giving you clear notice: Vox Political will close at the end of the year unless something dramatically changes. The good news is that The Whip Line already exists, is reader-funded, and is growing. That is where I can continue producing the journalism you value, free from the chaos of advertiser algorithms.
If you want the work to continue, please join me there. Free and paid subscriptions are available, but please remember it is the paid subscriptions – monthly and annual – that directly fund the reporting.”
There are indeed official lines in the government’s Budget documents that match what Disability News Service (DNS) reported, and these lines show the operational changes the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is planning around health-related benefits.
The Budget 2025 Policy Costings document states that the government is introducing a package of “operational improvements to health assessments” designed to “ensure people receive the right health or disability benefit and the system is sustainable”.
These changes include:
- Increasing capacity for Work Capability Assessment (WCA) reassessments;
- Changing the frequency of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) award reviews so that fewer people are called in for reassessment if their condition hasn’t changed;
- Increasing the number of face-to-face health assessments across PIP and WCA.
The budget costings document explicitly shows that the combined effect of these operational changes to assessments and reviews is projected to reduce public spending on health/disability benefits by about £1.95 billion over five years.
But the official documents do not break down how many individual claimants will be affected, or exactly how the savings will be achieved in practice.
In that case, This Writer would say we are justified in referring back to what the Treasury is quoted as saying – that the document is “just costing existing plans from planned welfare reforms – so nothing new from this”.
Has everybody forgotten what the existing plans are? I think they have, so let’s remind ourselves.
There’s a full analysis of this – and it upends what’s been said before. To read it, head over to The Whip Line.
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Pub bosses sign up to bar Labour MPs in protest against tax rises
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Labour MPs are being barred from UK pubs in a protest against tax rises that landlords say will cripple them.
The government – in what seems to be a spectacular example of doublespeak – says it is supporting the hospitality industry.
The BBC provides a snapshot of the situation:
“The Labour MP ban was kicked off a week ago and more than 250 pubs, restaurants and hotels have signed up all over the country, including the Old Thatch in Dorset.
“The Old Thatch landlord Andy Lennox said the protest was a last resort after multiple campaigns spelling out the need for tax cuts ended with higher taxes for hospitality.
“But the prime minister’s official spokesman said the chancellor had delivered a £4.3bn support package for pubs, restaurants, and cafes because hospitality is a “vital part of our economy”.
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“He said: “Without this intervention pubs would have faced a 45% rise in bills next year. We’ve cut that down to just 4%.
““We’ve also maintained the draught beer duty cut, eased licences rules over pavement drinks and events, and capped corporation tax.
““These measures show we’re backing hospitality not abandoning it.”
“Industry body UKHospitality disputes the government’s figures, both for the support package and the impact of intervention.”
Downing Street is leaning hard on three headline claims:
First, the £4.3 billion “support package”.
This is not a pot of cash handed to pubs. It is the Treasury’s estimate of the value of reduced tax take from a mix of measures, mainly business-rates tweaks, spread across retail, hospitality and leisure.
Second, the claim that without intervention, bills would have risen by forty-five per cent next year, but will now rise by “just four per cent”.
This figure refers to average, first-year increases, after transitional relief and caps are applied — not what businesses will ultimately pay once relief phases out.
Third, the argument that permanently lower Retail, Hospitality and Leisure (RHL) multipliers and licensing tweaks show the government is “backing pubs”.
Those are the talking points.
Landlords and industry bodies say this is misleading, saying the key issue is timeframe and averages.
The “four per cent” claim is not a denial that bills are rising sharply. It is a statement about year one only, with protections switched on.
Here’s what is actually happening:
- Rateable values have jumped, often dramatically, because they are now based on 2024 trading, not Covid-era 2021 conditions.
- The government is phasing in those increases over time.
- In the first year, most rises are capped (15 per cent for most properties, £800 for the smallest).
- That is where the “four per cent average” comes from.
But over two to three years, those caps fall away.
That is why landlords talk about doubling bills, while ministers talk about single-digit rises — they are discussing different points on the same curve.
Both statements can be technically true, but only one reflects the end result.
The £4.3 billion figure is not “support” in the way pubs understand support.
It includes:
- Lower multipliers for RHL properties
- Transitional relief
- The continuation of draught beer duty relief
- Forgone tax revenue compared with a hypothetical full revaluation hit
It does not include:
- Restored 75 per cent business rates relief
- VAT cuts
- NIC reversals
- Direct grants
So from a landlord’s point of view, it feels like the government is saying: “We didn’t hit you as hard as we could have — therefore we helped you.”
That is why the figure is being dismissed as accounting fiction rather than rescue.
The BBC piece explains something politically important about the MP bans: they are not the result of a sudden tantrum.
As Andy Lennox says, they are a last resort after letters to MPs, industry campaigns, meetings with ministers and public warnings were all followed by higher taxes anyway.
The anger is sharpened by the sense that the government is now denying reality, insisting pubs are protected while landlords are staring at figures they cannot pay.
That is why this has escalated into symbolic protest — “No Labour MPs” signs — even though landlords openly acknowledge it is risky and uncomfortable.
The BBC article explicitly notes:
- UK hospitality VAT is 20 per cent
- Most of Europe charges around half that
- The Liberal Democrats’ five-point VAT cut would “solve all the issues”, according to Lennox
This directly supports what This Writer has been saying for months: rates tweaks and licensing gimmicks cannot compensate for a structurally hostile tax environment.
VAT is the one lever that immediately affects
- Prices
- Footfall and
- Viability
Labour refuses to touch it.
This new development strengthens my earlier analysis.
It shows that the government is defending itself using short-term averages and capped increases while landlords are looking at medium-term reality; industry bodies dispute the Treasury’s framing; protest has moved from lobbying to open confrontation; and – crucially – the argument has shifted from “help us” to “stop pretending”
In other words, the gap between rhetoric and lived experience has become so wide that pubs are now willing to burn political bridges to make the point visible.
That is not the behaviour of a sector being “backed”.
It is the behaviour of one that feels cornered.
As for the government: once I suggested that the well-being of pubs and other hospitality businesses could be seen as a yardstick by which to gauge the prosperity of the UK generally.
By undermining that prosperity, it seems Labour is trying to ensure not only that the government cannot rely on such an indicator – but that nobody else can either.
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