Joey the wife-beater

Not for the first time in his life, Joey Barton's anger management issues have come to their logical conclusion in court.

So now he’s a convicted wife-beater, then. The case of Joey Barton and the witness who no longer wished to be a witness was a thorny one, in legal terms. Unwilling complainants—those who are not prepared to give evidence against their alleged abuser in court—are not uncommon in cases of domestic violence, and there are protocols relating to how such matters are dealt with.

In this case, as this helpful article from the Legal Gazette explains, it was considered that the complainant’s evidence was “incapable of belief” because she had sought to retract her original statement. They opted to not call her as a witness and proceeded on the basis of the complainant’s 999 call and police bodycam evidence. And with the previous case having been adjourned on account of all this kerfuffle over the complainant’s retraction, the High Court ordered a fresh trial.

But while the issues relating to the complainant are the reason for the delay in this case reaching a conclusion, one has now been reached and the conclusion was that he was a wife-beater. He did it. He’s now picked up a 12-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, for his troubles.

He’s already claimed that he’s going to appeal the verdict, but there has to have been a legitimate legal basis for the appeal, such as a procedural error or an error of law for this to happen, and with this already having been handed back down by the High Court, how he’d establish that is anybody’s guess.

The details in court do not paint a particularly positive picture of him. When asked if he had kicked his wife, he said no, but then added, “If I kicked someone in the head there would be a lot more damage than what’s alleged in this case”, which doesn’t sound like the best defence that one could make under such circumstances. That runaway mouth, yet again.

Does this come as a surprise? Only in the sense that so many domestic abusers get away with it, really. His anger management issues have been a known issue for literally decades. Whether stubbing a cigar out in someone’s eye, assaulting a teammate during a training session, leaving him unconscious and hospitalised with head injuries, including a suspected detached retina, or going to prison for punching somebody twenty times, he has been showing us who he is for years.

There is, of course, no pleasure to be taken from any of this. This was, after all, a case of domestic violence. A woman was assaulted, and then felt a need to retract her complaint, even though there was other evidence of what had happened readily available. Why she did that is her call, of course; we know it’s not uncommon for this to happen in cases of this nature.

It’s impossible to say what sort of prospects all this could have for Barton’s career options for the simple reason that he’s already done a good job of effectively ostracising himself from anyone who might want to give him a job in the media.

He’s already demonstrated himself to be fundamentally untrustworthy with words, having already lost a libel case to Jeremy Vine, and he has now just started another from Eni Aluko. The simple fact is, you can’t put someone that undisciplined on live television We all know just how much he’d love to be on Super Sunday, bantering away with Gary and Roy. It’s the inherent contradiction at the heart of him, and the reason why he’ll never be the man he believes he can be.

Could a newspaper or right-wing news channel take him on? Well, when it was just the culture war bullshit they probably would have done. But domestic abuse broadly crosses political divides. In a 2022 poll (PDF), YouGov asked what people made of the following statement:

A husband is upset with his wife because she forgot to tell him about an upcoming appointment that they have to attend. The conversation gets heated and the husband ends up slapping his wife across the face.

92% said such behaviour is “totally”, “extremely” or “very” wrong. Only 1% said “not wrong at all”. Rubbing the libs up the wrong way is one thing. But this is something else altogether. While we all know that domestic violence has never been that much of a barrier to entry into the entertainment world, from an entirely practical perspective it’s difficult to imagine any media organisation thinking that he would be worth the hassle. He’s said all the outrageous things. He’s bared his arse too many times. And there will always be plenty of others who’ll step into such shoes.

Back to the YouTube channel, then? But is that going to be paying him enough? He had 121,000 viewers for a two-hour something with Matthew Le Tissier the other week, which sounds impressive until you remember that he only gets paid every time watches an entire advertisement, and while such figures can be difficult to come by, estimates are that a video with 100,000 views will bring in something like £500-£700. Only three of the fourteen episodes of Common Sense with Joey Barton produced topped 100,000 views. Six have had less than 10,000.

But all this might be jumping the gun a little. His YouTube channel hasn’t had anything at all put on it in the last three months, and his last podcasty thing was viewed just 4,900 times. Regardless, it’s likely that he remains independently wealthy as a result of his playing and managerial careers. Life, we may pause to reflect, is not fair. And he’s back in court over the Aluko case at the moment.

Perhaps it’s best just to forget about him. Personally speaking, I’m not a Twitter user any more, so I’m not going to come across him there, and I figure I’ll pick up what I need to pick up what I need to know from elsewhere. Leave him to his absolute transformation into a divorced dad without even having been divorced. He’s luckier than he realises, and in more than one respect.

Accompanying image by Ray Shrewsberry • Ray_Shrewsberry from Pixabay