Finally, Alex Belfield is Sent To Jail – Justice Is Served

Alex ‘The Voice of Reason’ Belfield has been jailed for five years and 26 weeks after being convicted of four stalking charges against broadcasters and others including Jeremy Vine. One of the victims, a fellow BBC presenter, was seconds away from killing himself, the trial heard.

Although Belfield claimed that he was “deeply sorry for what he did”, albeit an apology with a current bill that runs at more than £100,000, his barrister David Aubrey KC said he “now has developed the insight that he didn’t have before.”

How the not very mighty are destined to fall into obscurity.

Mr Justice Saini, sentencing at Nottingham crown court, said he accepted Vine’s assertion that Belfield had “weaponised the internet”.

Furthermore, Justice Saini imposed restraining orders against Belfield, prohibiting him from having contact with the victims, and ordered him to pay costs of £10,000. 

In relation to the women, so cruelly dismissed previously during sentencing, the judge said: “Each of them suffered a campaign of harassment by email and social media communications. Each of them suffered serious mental health problems arising from Mr Belfield’s conduct.”

The judge explained he did not question the verdicts of the jurors, but was applying the civil standard of proof when making the restraining orders.

For now, stalker Belfield will serve up to half of his sentence in prison and the remainder on licence. He has been warned he could then be recalled to prison if he commits a further offence.

Yet truth retains at least one advantage: that reality itself can be counted on to support it. In contrast, every lie requires further lies to stay alive.

The tale of conspiracy theorist Belfield is a pungent mix of alternative facts, selective quotation and counter-narrative. Unfortunately, the game is up.

Naturally, the whole business has appalled freedom-loving trolls on Twitter, who are “shocked” by the “harsh sentence”, before concluding that “the deep state truly does exist”. 

You get the picture I trust?

Still, I’m no stranger to these demented folk having taken Belfield to task during the past 3 years. This is just the latest chapter in a much longer history of compulsive lying, obsessive intimidation and malicious bullying.

Alas, this insane situation is precisely why we have courtrooms, judges, lawyers and juries and why it’s vital that their inquiring of truth from belief remains a last recourse.

As so often in the rabbit hole down which shadow lurker Belfield has led us, I fear he will never be fully rehabilitated. For all the drama of this sorry saga, the way back still remains unclear.

Now, Belfield’s Youtube Channel currently leads with a ‘best of’ montage that says ’back soon’. Don’t count on it.

At last, though, righteous justice has been done. For now.