judgment” and later on in the statement he said “I remain firmly of the opinion that it is completely inappropriate for the Claimant as Shadow Justice Secretary to maintain associations with imagery, iconography and cultural references which are offensive, provocative and potentially upsetting to a number of everyday British citizens”. Mr Newton Dunn confirmed that he considered the story about Mr Burgon to be serious and not light hearted. 92. Although when being cross examined there were parts of Mr Newton Dunn’s evidence when it was apparent that he was fencing with Mr Speker (for example about whether Mr Elphicke was speaking for all of the Tories and what he thought amounted to a poster) in my judgment on the essential issue Mr Newton Dunn did honestly believe that Mr Burgon should be seriously criticised for associating with a band which used stylised “S”’s in a promotional tweet which persons might think were similar to the “S”’s in Nazi “SS” symbols. Mr Newton Dunn formed this opinion, part guided by his source’s comment and part because he was not aware of the Black Sabbath album cover, on the basis that Mr Newton Dunn considered that the Dream Troll image used Nazi iconography. Although he expressed this opinion in different ways and it was Mr Elphicke that had first used the words “terrible misjudgement”, Mr Newton Dunn did consider a serious misjudgement to be a terrible misjudgement. 93. It is right to record that Mr Newton Dunn had formed his opinion on the basis that he mistakenly believed that Mr Burgon knew about the Dream Troll image before Mr Newton Dunn had raised the issue with the Labour party duty press officer on 14 April 2017. This meant that Mr Newton Dunn was relying on the fact that Mr Burgon did not disassociate himself from the image or band after the issue was raised with the Labour party duty press officer. This might be considered to be a strong judgement to form on someone reacting on a Good Friday bank holiday to a story about a band which has produced an image obviously modelled on the Black Sabbath album, but the issue here is honesty and not reasonableness. Mr Newton Dunn was clear in his evidence that he held the opinion that even if the Dream Troll image was modelled on the Black Sabbath album, it did not excuse what Mr Newton Dunn considered to be his misjudgement in not disassociating himself from the image, and I accept Mr Newton Dunn’s evidence about his opinion. For completeness I should record that neither party adduced evidence of what had led Black Sabbath to use the stylised “S”’s in “Save our Soul”. I am therefore not in a position to make any findings in relation to this and it is not necessary to do so. 94. I should note that the defence as pleaded did not fully reflect Mr Newton Dunn’s opinion because that referred to “Nazi associated iconography” rather than Mr Newton Dunn’s belief that the band used “Nazi iconography”. However, whatever the scope of the changes made to the common law defence by the statutory wording, which can be determined in cases where it is necessary to do so, in my judgment this difference would not have undermined the defence of honest opinion if it was otherwise available. No publication in the public interest – paragraph 7(e) 95. On behalf of Mr Newton Dunn and News Group reliance was placed in particular on: