THE HON. MRS JUSTICE TIPPLES Approved judgment Greenstein v Campaign Against Antisemitism [2020] EWHC 2951 (QB) 20. An allegation of malice is an allegation of dishonesty (Thompson v James [2013] EWHC 585 (QB), Tugendhat J at [16]; Gatley at para 28.6). Paragraph 2.9 of the Practice Direction 532 sets out that “if the defendant contends that any of the words or matters are honest opinion … and the claimant intends to allege that the defendant acted with malice, the claimant must serve a reply giving details of the facts or matters relied on.” Implicit in this is that the details given must comply with the relevant principles of pleading: see Yeo at [29] to [33]. Further, the court must be vigilant to see these principles are applied, as they represent an important safeguard for freedom of expression: see Yeo at [35]. 21. Against that background, I now turn to each of the defamation claims. The defamation claims (1) The opinion that the claimant was an antisemite 22. The meaning found by Nicklin J was a general charge that the claimant was an antisemite. The term antisemite is not defined. This is important as the defendant maintains that this means that the court does not have to grapple with arguments over the correctness of the IDA definition and its examples of possible contemporary antisemitism. However, the defendant accepts that the IDA definition is useful in providing examples of the type of conduct and speech that could lead an honest person to believe that someone is antisemitic. 23. The claimant take issue with this approach. He maintains that the IDA definition is central to the defendant’s honest opinion defence; the defendant has misapplied and misused the IDA definition in order to attack the claimant for political reasons, and not on the basis that he is antisemitic; and that the defendant’s reliance on the IDA definition is “generally problematic, particularly so in the context of its honest opinion defence”. The claimant maintains that it is the IDA definition of antisemitism which is at the heart of this dispute and gives rise to a factual dispute that can only be determined at trial. 24. I disagree. The claimant’s approach overlooks the finding made by Nicklin J that “the claimant was antisemitic” was an expression of opinion and that that finding does not include any definition of “antisemitic”. The situation might have been different if Nicklin J had found that the first meaning at paragraph 4(a)(i) above was an allegation of fact as, in the context of a truth defence, the IDA definition might have been relevant. However, that is not this case. 25. I therefore agree with Mr Speker that the issue is whether an honest person could believe the claimant to be an antisemite and the claimant’s arguments in relation to the IDA definition, together with the complaint that it has been “selectively quoted” in the amended defence, are irrelevant. 2 The claim was issued before 1 October 2019 and this was the paragraph of the Practice Direction in force at that time. 8