18th January 2023
There is a certain intellectual satisfaction to be had from watching an investigation done well – especially if you have watched it unfold in real time.
The work of tax lawyer and blogger Dan Neidle (who I know) on the remarkable matter of the tax affairs of Nadhim Zahawi is to be savoured.
Click on this link and read the chronology of how Neidle went step-by-step from the moment he thought something here just was not right.
(I remember in prehistoric times, when I had the same moment in the Nightjack and the Saudi prisons contract stories.)
I am not a tax lawyer, but I do know a bit about media law, and from that perspective I would like to add a couple of points about this story.
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There is nothing wrong, in principle, with any person asserting their legal rights – in defamation or anything else – if their legal rights are being infringed.
And so, until and unless the law of defamation is abolished, Zahawi and anybody else – including you – can seek to defend their – your – rights.
The problem here is not that there were libel letters, but that Zahawi’s legal strategy was flawed to begin with.
And so, faced with someone who knew what they were doing, the legal strategy first had to keep changing, before falling apart.
Moreover, lawyers’ letters can often be more revealing in what they do not say, rather than what they do say – and, if read carefully, even the most robust-seeming lawyers’ letter can expose the weakness of the position of a hapless client.
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We do not know the extent to which Zahawi’s lawyers were acting under instruction – and although lawyers can advise, it is always the client who decides.
(That said, the Solicitors Regulatory Authority was absolutely right to remind the lawyers involved that legal correspondence should not be abused.)
And the wise litigation lawyer will already know that heading a letter “Not For Publication” can be often a triumph of hope over experience, especially when dealing with bloggers.
The aggressive legal strategy would have to have been approved by Zadawi.
And so the fault for Zahawi’s botched legal strategy must ultimately be with Zahawi.
He no doubt went to his lawyers instructing them to get the problem to go away, but by doing so, he made his own position far worse.
The gaps in the aggressive legal letters were telling, and they would have been better unsent.
The legal strategy adopted by Zahawi is as much a misjudgment as anything else in this matter.
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The fate of Zahawi is now in the realm of politics, not law.
He may survive, and the political circus may move on.
But whatever happens, the elegant and thorough blogging of Neidle will stand as an outstanding example of what can be done, over time, when an investigation is done well.
Bravo.
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