Richard Tice, a co-founder of Leave.EU campaign, is threatening to sue Remain campaigner Femi Oluwole, a British-Nigerian, for defamation. He has called out Leave.EU over a tweet depicting George Soros as a shadowy puppet master, Oluwole accused Tice of founding an ‘overtly anti-Jewish organisation’. Richard Tice is also the chairman of the Brexit Party
Spiked, Britain’s first online-only current-affairs publication, has rose in defence of Oluwole in the spirit of free speech, worrying that that “The Brexit Party is worryingly litigious.” Spiked wrote in an editorial: “People who put themselves forward in politics should not be immune to criticism or insults, no matter how harsh, unfair or even false they might be. Political debate becomes stale and meaningless if it cannot get heated and instead is policed by lawyers. Tice’s legal action is more damaging to politics than the comments he is suing over. Potentially bankrupting your political opponents is nothing to celebrate. “
Oluwole was born in Darlington to a surgeon father and a paediatrician mother, who both emigrated to the United Kingdom in the 1980s. He grew up in the West Midlands but as a child lived in several different places across the country, having once attended a school in Dundee. He studied law and the French language at the University of Nottingham, while completing an Erasmus Programme year in France. He is a co-founder and chief spokesperson of Our Future
