Legal fund for Corbyn reaches £160,000 after Labour’s Panorama settlement

A fund created in response to reports that BBC journalist John Ware is taking legal action against former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has reached over £160,000 in donations.

The GoFundMe page was set up after Labour reached a settlement apologised to the BBC journalist and several former party staffers in relation to a libel case concerning a 2019 Panorama documentary.

The page, which has attracted 8,548 donors, had an initial target of raising £20,000. Organiser Carole Morgan has written that “Jeremy’s office has been in touch and he is deeply touched by this outpouring of love and support”.

The organiser also explained that the money will remain with GoFundMe until “the details for distribution have been established with Jeremy’s office”.

In a statement earlier this week, Labour said it “apologises unreservedly” to the former employees and Ware and agreed to pay “substantial damages”. The settlement is believed to have cost the party between £600,000 and £750,000.

A Labour spokesperson at the time the documentary was aired had said that Ware had made “deliberate and malicious misrepresentations designed to mislead the public”.

However, in its apology to the journalist this week the party said that those statements had included “invented quotes”, “flouted journalistic ethics” and were “defamatory”.

Corbyn criticised the Labour Party’s decision to apologise and settle the case, calling it a “political decision, not a legal one”. He also said the legal advice given to Labour had been that “the party had a strong defence”.

The Islington MP said: “The decision to settle these claims in this way is disappointing, and risks giving credibility to misleading and inaccurate allegations about action taken to tackle antisemitism in the Labour Party in recent years.”