IPSO can stop this escalating war of lies against Misan Harriman. Not doing so is a failure of regulation

The manufactured outrage machine has stepped up a gear in its war on Southbank Centre chair Misan Harriman.

More than 60 members of the House of Lords and Commons have signed a letter, I understand, to the secretary of state for culture, media and sport Lisa Nandy, calling for her to act against Harriman. The letter is entirely predicated on the false smears to which Harriman has been subjected since his social media post on the morning of the local election results.

I am told the letter repeats the Daily Telegraph’s claims that Harriman spread conspiracy theories about the Golders Green stabbings of April 29 and compared Reform UK to the Nazi Party following the local elections, and calls on Nandy to investigate both the Southbank Centre and Harriman himself. Those claims are, as anyone who spends more than five minutes researching them will establish, both objectively false.

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The letter – signed by, amongst others, Reform’s Richard Tice and Suella Braverman and former Ofcom chair Michael Grade – will also, I understand, reference a procession of Times articles, letters to the editor and a comment piece calling for Harriman to be investigated by the Charity Commission – all of which are similarly based on the original misleading Daily Telegraph report that sparked this Kafkaesque fiasco.

Meanwhile, three newspapers – the Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express – have been the subject of record numbers of complaints over their coverage of the Harriman case. As of yesterday, the Daily Mail had received 7,605 complaints, the Express 7,889 and the Telegraph 8,254. Large numbers of complaints have also been lodged against the Times, bringing the total number of complaints to IPSO over this affair to around 25,000 – equalling the UK record.

However, the IPSO process may drag on far too long to ensure Harriman is given a fair hearing. The concerted and coordinated nature of the attack on him could achieve its stated goal – his removal from post – before the regulator’s gears have engaged. In some cases, it takes IPSO months to reach a resolution.

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This extraordinary case – in which original misleading reporting goes uncorrected and is used as the basis of an escalating campaign against one individual by people who either cannot be bothered to establish the basic facts, or simply choose not to because those facts do not suit their agenda – exposes a serious flaw in IPSO’s operating model.

IPSO should act with all due haste and issue an emergency interim finding on the Harriman case, making clear that continued reporting in defiance of its findings would exacerbate any sanctions ultimately imposed. It should also immediately inform Lisa Nandy, the recipient of this dangerously misleading letter, that it is investigating the reports on which the entire farrago is based and has serious concerns about their accuracy.

Failing to do so renders IPSO a near-irrelevance in influencing the industry it is supposed to regulate.