Good Law Project: Crime of the Century?

Posted on August 5, 2026 by wonkypolicywonk

(With apologies to Supertramp)

This morning, the Good Law Project launched their 💥 100th 💥 lawfare-related crowdfunder since wealthy tax lawyer turned turd polisher Jolyon Maugham KC founded the GLP in March 2017. So today seems the right moment for me to update – probably for the very last time – my Table of Failure & Futility (ToFF), which tells us quite a lot about the GLP’s past and present schemes and adventuring.

You do not need to be a geek to see from my ToFF that the GLP’s crowdfunders do not hit the big numbers quite as often as they used to when Maugham and the GLP were labouring – unsuccessfully – to bring down the Goliaths known as Brexit, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. Of the 44 crowdfunders they launched between 1 January 2021 and 4 July 2024, 26 (60%) raised more than £40,000, and 17 (40%) raised more than £60,000. But of the 27 crowdfunders they have launched since the demise of their Tory cash cow in July 2024, only four (15%) have raised more than £40,000.

Sure, each of those four crowdfunders has raised a lot more than £40,000: three of them have raised more than £120,000, and one has raised a walloping £489,606, making it the GLP’s most lucrative crowdfunder … EVER!

Indeed, collectively, the now four open crowdfunders in support of the GLP’s ongoing but seemingly doomed effort to undo the Supreme Court’s April 2025 ruling in the case of For Women Scotland have so far raised a colossal £761,781, somewhat more than twice the GLP’s total income from crowdfunding in their financial year 2024-25 (£322,000), and not far short of the £804,952 they raised from nine crowdfunders over two years of Brexit-related lawfare in 2017-19.

Well, if you don’t support trans, you are a monster. Or something. And, as Maugham reportedly told a group of Cambridge University students late last year, “trans rights are the canary in the coal mine for fascism” and “people who are transphobes become fascist adjacent”. Of course they do. And wealthy tax (avoidance) lawyers who have trans-identifying kids become Gandhi adjacent.

Josh Glancy interviews Jolyon Maugham, the Times, 29 April 2023

So you also do not need to be a geek to see from my ToFF that eight (40%) of the GLP’s 20 most recent crowdfunders were/are about transgenderism, and that those eight crowdfunders – six of which remain open to new donations – account for £832,820 (82%) of the total of £1,012,650 raised by the 20 crowdfunders to date. And that is despite Maugham having emailed GLP supporters in September 2024 – a couple of months after the GLP was given a legal spanking by the High Court on puberty blockers – to inform them that, as “it’s getting harder and harder to win rights for the trans community through the courts, and it doesn’t feel right to keep asking the community and its allies to carry on contributing to the enormous costs of this increasingly difficult litigation”, the GLP would now be “focusing our legal campaigns elsewhere” instead.

Evidently, Maugham now does consider it right to ask the trans community and its allies to contribute to the enormous costs of increasingly difficult litigation.

However, the ruling of the apparently fascist adjacent Supreme Court judges in For Women Scotland was a singular event that is unlikely to be repeated any time soon. And, overall, the GLP’s ever more frantic crowdfunding is showing diminishing returns.

The 13 crowdfunders launched between April 2020 and the end of that year (i.e. Year One of Covid19) raised an average of £162,930, while ten (77%) of the crowdfunders raised more than £60,000, six raised more than £120,000, and two raised more than £400,000.

Similarly, the average sum raised by the 23 crowdfunders launched in the two-year period January 2021 to December 2022 was £62,482, while the 21 crowdfunders launched between January 2023 and July 2024 raised an average of £41,139. But, leaving aside the four For Women Scotland-related crowdfunders (including the brand new one), the average sum raised (to date) by the other 23 crowdfunders launched under the Labour Government is just £20,602.

Somewhat hilariously, and characteristically, in 2025 the GLP claimed this decline in their crowdfunding fortunes is due to “fewer of [our] campaigns requiring crowdfunding support”. In fact, over the past five years, the number of crowdfunded campaigns has steadily increased, from nine in 2022, to 12 in 2023 and in 2024, to 14 in 2025, and ten in the first eight months of 2026.

Whatever, you certainly don’t need to be a geek to see that there isn’t an awful lot of green shading in my ToFF. Maugham and the GLP may have raised a total of more than £3.5 million from 71 crowdfunders since 1 January 2021, but all that they have achieved with that moolah (to date) is:

  • two now irrelevant court wins on Net Zero, in 2022 and early 2024, that did not lead to any significant change in the then Tory government’s policies before the change of government in July 2024;
  • the overturning of a Shrewsbury Town Council planning decision, in 2023;
  • the funding of law firm Bindmans’ defamation defence of Nina Cresswell, in 2023;
  • a £25K settlement with a US law firm in a trivial transgenderism case, in 2025; and
  • a settlement with Northumbria Police on behalf of Nina Cresswell, in 2026.

Furthermore, compared to trying to stop Brexit or topple Boris Johnson, many of the GLP’s recent crowdfunded cases seem somewhat parochial. Currently, as well as fighting a long-running and hugely expensive but contrived and utterly pointless legal battle with Reform UK over trivial data protection issues, the GLP is enabling Michaela Hall’s family to sue Devon & Cornwall Police and the Ministry of Justice; helping student activist Stella Maris sue her university (St Andrews); helping right-wing commentator Albie Amonkona bring an Employment Tribunal claim against his right-wing former employer GB News; enabling an unidentified individual to bring an Employment Tribunal claim against the Daily Mail; and enabling Gaie Delap to sue the Ministry of Justice for making her serve a few weeks more of her 20-month prison sentence in prison (Delap having previously been released on home detention curfew after serving just three months in prison).

Whatever the merits and outcome of such cases, they will most likely not Change The World, however much the GLP grifts from people who (understandably) want to Change The World.

So, Crime of the Century? Or just a Soapbox Opera? You decide. But do bear in mind that the wealthy activist tax lawyer – indeed a legal profession – that does not labour to turn rights into realities is but a servant to the interests of those with money. Or something. And the work done by wealthy activist tax lawyers is only possible with crowdfunding.

Maybe this is because the wealthy activist tax lawyers need to keep their own money for things like luxury windmills, holidays in apricot orchards with remarkably fragrant rosemary bushes, wine cellars, and baseball bats. Whatever, we must surely welcome the rise of the wealthy activist tax lawyer.

Posted in Crowdfunding, Sex & Gender | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Road to Nowhere: traffic update (3)

Posted on August 4, 2026 by wonkypolicywonk

With the revised Equality & Human Rights Commission (EHRC) Code of Practice for Services, Public Functions and Associations finally coming into force tomorrow, it’s time for another traffic update from the Road to Nowhere.

As noted in previous traffic updates, following the Supreme Court’s landmark April 2025 ruling in the case of For Women Scotland, four pro-trans pressure groups – the Good Law Project, TransLucent, Liberty and the Trans Legal Clinic – jumped into their clown cars to race down the road to Nowhere, where they hoped to undo the Supreme Court ruling by scuppering the EHRC’s consultation on associated further revisions to the then draft Code of Practice, and by otherwise making a legal nuisance of themselves.

However, despite having since crowdfunded a combined total of more than £892,600 from the ‘trans community’ and its allies to fund their thrilling road trips to Nowhere, none of them have got very far. And, from tomorrow, the revised Code of Practice is statutory guidance. So, game over.

Except that … having failed to scupper the EHRC’s consultation on and delivery of a revised Code of Practice, at least some of the pro-trans pressure groups now seem set on trying to bring a legal challenge to the statutory guidance. And first out of the blocks were TransLucent, who have already crowdfunded almost £39,000 in support of their nascent attempt to seek a judicial review in the High Court.

TransLucent’s solicitors, the law firm Russell-Cooke, sent a letter before action to both the EHRC and equalities minister Bridget Phillipson on 3 July. However, at the time of writing TransLucent have not yet published either that letter or any response, so it is questionable whether the more than 700 donors to the crowdfunder have been provided with the material information they would have needed to make an informed decision about whether or not to donate (and, if so, how much).

Meanwhile, since 14 July, when Bridget Phillipson signed the commencement order that brings the revised Code of Practice into force as statutory guidance tomorrow, the Good Law Project have been able to sit back and enjoy that clear setback for ‘trans rights’ generating a new wave of more than 1,000 donations, totalling some £26,700, to their crowdfunder in support of their attempt to appeal the legal kicking they were given by the High Court in February. For the GLP, it seems, every setback has a silver lining.

Indeed, the twin setbacks to the stated legal objectives of the GLP’s original, crowdfunded High Court challenge to the EHRC’s consultation process and Interim Update – the first on 21 May, when Phillipson finally laid the revised Code of Practice in Parliament, and the second on 14 July, when she signed the commencement order – have boosted their appeal crowdfunder from a relatively modest £55,878 on 21 May, to £105,778. Ker-ching!

Anatomy of a GLP crowdfunder: How two significant setbacks, on 21 May and 14 July, to the stated legal objectives of the original ‘EHRC Interim Update’ crowdfunder boosted the appeal crowdfunder from £55,878 on 21 May, to £105,778 today

Anyway, if you are a midwit looking for an easy way to dispose of your spare cash, stand by for the next traffic update from the Road to Nowhere. Because, these days, crowdfunders in support of transgenderism-related lawfare are like the proverbial buses, and there will most likely be another two or three along in a minute.

Update, 5 August: Well, as anticipated, this morning the Good Law Project launched their new crowdfunder in support of a similarly nascent attempt to seek a judicial review of the statutory guidance in the High Court. Acting on behalf of the GLP, the law firm Leigh Day sent a letter before action to both the EHRC and Angela Rayner, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, on 28 July. And, unlike TransLucent, the GLP have published that letter.

Meanwhile, TransLucent have labelled today The Labour Party’s Day of Shame:

Anyway, spare a thought for all the midwits who support trans, as they now have to decide whether to donate to the GLP’s crowdfunder in support of their attempt to appeal to the Court of Appeal, or TransLucent’s crowdfunder in support of their attempt to seek a judicial review of the new EHRC statutory guidance in the High Court, or the GLP’s crowdfunder in support of their attempt to seek a judicial review of the new EHRC statutory guidance in the High Court. Or to all three!

In case it’s any help, here’s my updated table, showing these and other donating options (both TransLucent and the GLP have two other open crowdfunders in support of their attempt to undo the Supreme Court ruling in For Women Scotland.) Just take care the next time you’re at the cinema in Godalming on a wet Tuesday evening.

Update, 9 August: In an update to their crowdfunder, TransLucent say that they have now received responses to their letter before action from both the EHRC and equalities minister Bridget Phillipson, and that they expect to file their claim in the High Court “in the coming weeks”. However, being TransLucent, not TransParent, they haven’t (yet) published those responses.

Meanwhile, the total sum crowdfunded by the pro-trans pressure groups in support of their efforts to demonstrate that they, not the judges of the Supreme Court, know the law best is now just short of £920,000, and seems set to pass £1 million long before the proposed litigation concludes.

Posted in Crowdfunding, Sex & Gender | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Millionaire shortbread

Posted on July 23, 2026 by wonkypolicywonk

So, some 120 UK-based millionaires – including football pundit Gary Lineker, crime writer Val McDermid, screenwriter/director Richard Curtis and at least 100 people you’ve never heard of – have generously written to newbie prime minister Andy Burnham, urging him to tax them more. And they claim to represent 75% of the UK’s millionaires (even though by most estimates there are between two and three million millionaires living in the UK – a lot depends on how you define ‘millionaire’).

Which is nice of them. Even if we can only guess how and why most of these 120 generous souls became a millionaire in the first place. Though, by their own account, not one of them gets up and goes to work for their income every day.

Unfortunately, the ‘Proud to Pay’ millionaires don’t say how – or by how much – Andy Burnham should tax them more. And, as noted previously on this blog, we know that wealth taxes are problematic.

But I have a proposal. I suggest Andy Burnham creates a voluntary wealth tax, for patriotic millionaires and billionaires who believe they should pay more tax. This would avoid the (significant) problems of asset valuation, collection and enforcement associated with most wealth tax proposals. And it would be quick and easy to set up, as the Treasury already has a voluntary donation facility All that Andy Burnham would need to do is establish a system for publishing the amount of extra tax voluntarily donated via that facility by Gary Lineker and each of his fellow ‘Proud to Pay’ millionaires, and then the public could see just how ‘proud to pay’ they really are.

Gary and his mates say they can afford to pay more tax. The mechanism for them to do so already exists (though, strangely, few if any of them are using it). After 14 years of Tory austerity and misrule, our public services really, really need that extra tax. And, as Gary and his mates say they would be ‘proud to pay’ more tax, there really can’t be any objection to us knowing how much more tax they voluntarily pay under my proposal. So, let’s allow the self-declared patriotic “super rich” to put their tax returns where their mouths are.

Posted in politics | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Road to Nowhere: traffic update (2)

Posted on July 13, 2026 by wonkypolicywonk

[First published on 13 July, this post was updated on 15 July.]

With the 40-day period for Parliament to review the revised EHRC Code of Practice for services, public functions and associations that Bridget ‘moral midget’ Phillipson finally laid before Parliament on 21 May having expired last week, Phillipson is now expected to shortly issue the necessary commencement order indicating when the Code of Practice will come into force. So it’s time for another traffic update from the Road to Nowhere.

[Update: Bridget Phillipson signed the commencement order on 14 July, and the new Code of Practice is now set to come into force as statutory guidance on 5 August, when the existing (2011) Code of Practice/statutory guidance will be revoked.]

As noted in previous traffic updates, following the Supreme Court’s momentous April 2025 ruling in the case of For Women Scotland, four transactivist groups – the Good Law Project, TransLucent, Liberty and the Trans Legal Clinic – jumped into their clown cars to race down the road to Nowhere, where they hoped to undo the ruling by scuppering the EHRC’s consultation on the draft Code of Practice, and otherwise making a legal nuisance of themselves. But, despite crowdfunding a total of more than £825,000 from the ‘trans community’ and its allies to fund their road trips, they haven’t got very far.

Last summer, the once respected Liberty didn’t even get to Junction 2 on the Road to Nowhere before their road trip was brought to an end by the High Court and Court of Appeal, and they were ordered to hand all but £638 of the £20,638 they had crowdfunded to the EHRC. And, 15 months on from the Supreme Court ruling, TransLucent are still yet to do anything at all with the £36,672 they have raised to date.

Literally no one has donated to the first of TransLucent’s two crowfunders since July last year, and the crowdfunder’s text has never been updated, yet it remains open to new donations from any passing midwits. And pretty much the only people still donating to the second – launched that month in support of an attempt to intervene in legal action brought by Sex Matters that is now set to be heard by the High Court in early November – are trans-identifying business owner Simona Berry, who donates £50 every month, and trans activist Daniel Hibbs-Woodings, who donates £5 every month.

As for the Trans Legal Clinic, led by fashion icon Olivia Campbell-Cavendish and instagram celebrity Mx Oscar ‘dying swan‘ Davies of Garden Court Chambers, they are still marooned in the gateway services, waiting to hear whether their clown car has permission from the European Court of Human Rights to even set out on the Road to Nowhere. And last month, without explanation, they closed their in-house crowdfunder, despite having raised less than 20% of their target of £150,000. Maybe their clown car has failed its MoT.

In June 2025, the Trans Legal Clinic was awarded a grant of £225,000 for ‘premises costs’ by the Three Guineas Trust, one of the Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts, and in August 2025 it was awarded a further grant of £445,000 for ‘core costs’ by the same Trust. Yet neither of these grants appears in the Trans Legal Clinic’s accounts and trustees’ annual report for the year ending 31 August 2025, submitted to and published by the Charity Commission on 30 June, which reports total income of £140,998 (seemingly including an unrestricted grant of £10,000 from the Three Guineas Trust in April 2025), and total expenditure of £14,238.

Furthermore, despite these Three Guineas Trust grants (totalling £680,000) in April, June and August 2025, as well as a £5,000 donation from the Good Law Project in September 2025, and funding from the Kings Community Fund (a student-led initiative administered by the King’s College London Students Union), the ‘Get Help’ section of the Trans Legal Clinic’s website has, since May 2025, stated that the Clinic is, well, unable to offer any legal help to anyone it wasn’t already helping at the time of the April 2025 Supreme Court ruling in For Women Scotland. Increasingly steep incline, innit.

The ‘Get Help’ section of the Trans Legal Clinic’s website, as of 13 July 2026

Maybe the Trans Legal Clinic hasn’t yet actually received those Three Guineas Trust grants of £225,000 and £445,000. However, given that, as of 31 August 2025, they were sitting on a tidy surplus of £126,760 – almost nine times their total expenditure of just £14,238 over the previous 12 months – you’d think they might have found a way to make their legal help available to at least some of those in need of it since then. Or maybe they’ve just forgotten to update the ‘Get Help’ section of their website.

[Update: It seems the Trans Legal Clinic is finally going to start putting those whopping great Three Guineas Trust grants to good use, starting with a (sparkly) black-tie Grand Opening party on 8 August, at their flashy new rented office space on the Strand. The Trans+ Liberation is back on, and Olivia and the team are very excited.]

Meanwhile, the Good Law Project, led by the Bar’s greatest free speech champion and turd polisher, Jolyon Maugham KC, have now raised more than £740,000 from their four crowdfunders in support of their road trip. And three of those crowdfunders – including the most recent, launched in February – remain open to new donations. But all that they have achieved with that moolah (so far) is a legal spanking by the High Court in February, and a £300,000 bill from the EHRC for legal costs.

In total, then, the Good Law Project, TransLucent, Liberty and the Trans Legal Clinic have so far crowdfunded more than £825,000 from the ‘trans community’ and its allies to fund their no doubt thrilling but so far utterly pointless road race to Nowhere. Well, if you don’t support trans, you are a monster.

T-shirts on sale in the GLP’s online merch shop, early on 14 July 2026.
Later the same day, along with the entire ‘Monsters’ website and billboard campaign, the T-shirts were binned.

Six years ago, in a comment piece headed “Is crowdfunding the next mis-selling scandal?“, Maugham himself highlighted two fundamental problems with activist lawyers crowdfunding their own lawfare: “the lack of a client interest to act as counterweight to that of the lawyers, and the success of the exercise being contingent on a thriving crowdfunding page”. And he warned:

The [crowdfunders] that succeed are typically those which most closely align what are said to be their legal objectives with the policy ambitions of a particular audience. This creates a clear moral hazard around mis-selling litigation or over-promising on prospects. Who protects the interests of donors? Who keeps the lawyers honest?

Given the news from the Road to Nowhere, Maugham seems to have had a point.

They can tell you what to do
But they’ll make a fool of you
It’s not alright, baby, it’s not alright

Posted in Crowdfunding, Sex & Gender | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Good Law Project: the law(fare) of averages

Posted on July 2, 2026 by wonkypolicywonk

Since the beginning of 2024, Jolyon Maugham KC and his Good Law Project have been busy holding people and organisations they don’t like to account, standing against hate, and bringing hope. Or something. And, to support this transformational activity, they have launched no fewer than 34 crowdfunders (one every month, on average). Well, holding power to account doesn’t come cheap.

So much for legal action being the remedy of last resort, eh?

Those 34 crowdfunders have (so far) raised a combined total of £1,358,434. Of which a stonking £880,560 (65%) has been raised via the 11 crowdfunders in support of Maugham’s ‘Angry Dad’ lawfare on Transgenderism. And one of those 11 crowdfunders – that in support of the GLP’s doomed legal challenge to the EHRC’s April 2025 Interim Update, dismissed by the High Court in February this year – has raised a mahoosive £489,487, making it the GLP’s most lucrative crowdfunder … EVER! What’s more, it’s still open and still receiving new donations. Ker-ching!

Whether or not the so-called ‘trans community’ and its allies consider themselves to be getting value for money from Maugham and the GLP is now an open question, but their remarkable generosity in handing over their spare cash is plain to see from the following chart. Since 1 January 2024, the average donation to the GLP’s crowfunders in support of lawfare to ‘hold power to account’ or ‘fight the far right’ has rarely been more than £19. But, with few exceptions – such as the GLP’s trivial claim against the US law firm Morrison Foerster, and their latest crowdfunder in support of malevolent legal action against Ofcom – the average donation to the GLP’s crowdfunders on transgenderism is generally close to twice that amount.

Note that the average donation to the short-lived GLP crowdfunder in support of their attempt to intervene in the case of the EHRC office protest ban in June 2025 was not £50, as the chart suggests, but £833, as there were only ever 19 donations and one of them – made by the professional activist Patsy Stevenson – was for some £15,000. Ker-ching!

So, whatever happens in court over the next few months – and the GLP’s crowdfunded application to the Court of Appeal for permission to appeal the kicking they were given by the High Court in February is currently with a Lord/Lady Justice for a judicial decision on the papers – it seems likely that Maugham and the GLP will continue to beg money from the so-called ‘trans community’ and its allies.

Because … Ker-ching!

Posted in Crowdfunding, Sex & Gender | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Brexit: the stupendous stupidity of the Green Party

Posted on June 30, 2026 by wonkypolicywonk

Last week, a column by the liberal, pro-European journalist Hugo Rifkind about the 2016 Referendum reminded me that, of the two charlatan-led political parties currently hoovering up votes from the Labour Party on account of its ostrich-like stance on Brexit – Reform UK from the right, and the Green Party from the left – only one actually voted in Parliament to hold the stupendously stupid plebiscite. And it wasn’t Reform UK.

In his column in the Times, Rifkind noted that the mind-bogglingly stupid 2016 Referendum has since “bound successive governments to a mandate they don’t believe in”:

When Andy Burnham becomes our seventh [prime minister] since the Brexit vote, he will be the fifth one of them who didn’t vote for it. This has not been some Establishment stitch-up. Rather, it has been the direct consequence of divorcing our choice of action from our choice of actor; of demanding economics opposed by economists, diplomacy opposed by diplomats, and ultimately governance opposed by anyone we might actually choose to govern.

Voters aren’t to blame for this. Offer them a stark choice between A and B, as David Cameron did, and they will reasonably, if wrongly, infer the existence of unseen mechanisms capable of delivering [either A or B]. Mainstream politicians, no matter that they didn’t want this mandate in the first place, are now doomed if they ever say so out loud, and so by default begin to talk absolute transparent bollocks.

As a result, honesty appears to become the preserve of a wholly new breed of politicians – basically activists – utterly unconstrained by the dull, practical compromises required to actually deliver anything.

This is where that Referendum left us. Not just with Reform UK, but with the Greens too. And with shrieking promises from politicians who are fully aware that the moment they actually win [an election], their first task will be to figure out how to break them.

All of which is absolutely spot-on. And, of course, the only reason Reform UK didn’t vote in Parliament for the EU Referendum in 2015 is that they didn’t yet exist – and so didn’t have any MPs or peers in Parliament at the time. But the Green Party did. And they – the supposedly cerebral Caroline Lucas MP and the certainly less cerebral (and at that point pro-Brexit) Baroness Jenny Jones – not only actively campaigned to have a stupendously stupid EU Referendum, but voted with their supposed arch-enemies – the Tories – to pass the latter’s stupendously stupid European Union Referendum Act 2015.

As early as October 2011, at which point she’d been an MP for all of 18 months, Caroline Lucas actively supported and then voted for a Commons motion tabled by the rabidly anti-EU Tory MP David Nuttall, calling for a referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU. And she did so because … “I am pro-democracy”.

The pro-democracy David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband, Dominic Grieve, Chuka Umunna, Anna Soubry, Jo Swinson and even Michael Gove all voted against the nutty Nuttall’s nutty motion. But Lucas happily waltzed through the ‘yes’ lobby with avowed Brexiteers Steve Baker, Andrew Bridgen, Douglas Carswell, Bill Cash, Nadine Dorries, Kate Hoey, Andrea Leadsom, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Gisela Stuart. Cerebral? I think not.

Green Party press release, October 2011

Then, ahead of the General Election in May 2015, the Green Party campaigned on a manifesto pledge to “prioritise local self-reliance rather than the EU’s unsustainable economics of free trade and growth”. Which I think means ‘we’ll make you grow your own turnips’. And, one month later, the ‘pro-democracy’ Lucas abstained on an SNP motion to deny the new Tory Government’s stupendously stupid European Union Referendum Bill its Second Reading (not least because “the Bill does not give the right to vote to 16 and 17 year olds or most EU nationals living in the UK”).

The SNP motion was defeated by 338 votes to 59. Evidently, the ‘pro-democracy’ and comfortably off Lucas was more interested in having a Brexit referendum than she was in enfranchising the 16 and 17 year olds who – unlike her – would have to live with the economic and social consequences of the result for the entirety of their adult lives.

Then, in September that year, the ‘pro-democracy’ Lucas once again waltzed through the ‘yes’ lobby with the lovely Baker, Bridgen, Cash, Leadsom and Rees-Mogg – as well as Liam Fox, Mark Francois and Liz Truss – to give the Cameron-led Government’s EU Referendum Bill its Third Reading and send it on to the House of Lords, through which it sailed without a single vote. Well done, Caroline Lucas, Baroness Jenny Jones and the Green Party!

However, as you may recall, the ‘pro-democracy’ Lucas didn’t like the result of the stupendously stupid EU Referendum she had stupidly campaigned for and voted to hold without the participation of 16 and 17 year olds. So in April 2018 she teamed up with Chuka Umunna (Labour), Anna Soubry (Tory) and Layla Moran (Fib Dem) to launch the People’s Vote campaign, with a view to having a second go at getting ‘the people’ to vote the way she wanted. However, as I noted on this blog at the time, the Fab Four were never able to say what options would actually be on any ‘People’s Vote’ ballot paper, and in any case there simply wasn’t time for a re-run of the 2016 fiasco.

By August 2019, with the stupendously stupid People’s Vote campaign having inevitably hit the buffers, the supposedly inclusive Lucas moved on to proposing an all-white Cabinet of women – including Nicola Sturgeon, whose then husband has just been convicted of embezzling £400K from the SNP – to somehow sort Brexit. Unsurprisingly, that batshit crazy idea didn’t fly, so the ‘pro-democracy’ Lucas doubled-down by admitting she wouldn’t accept the result of any People’s Vote/second referendum if ‘the people’ didn’t vote the way she wanted. Democracy the Green way, innit.

Fast forward to 2026 and, needless to say, the Green Party would like everyone to forget its stupendously stupid encouragement and facilitation of arguably the most damaging political decision in modern British history. As the Party’s new, populist leader David Paulden/Zack Polanski now says, Brexit was “one of the most catastrophic decisions this country has ever made”. It’s almost as if Paulden/Polanski is as cerebral as Caroline Lucas.

But I will never forget. And nor should you.

Posted in Brexit, politics | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

GLP: an online onslaught of failure and futility

Posted on June 20, 2026 by wonkypolicywonk

With barrister Sarah Phillimore having this week served her defamation claim on noted turd polisher Jolyon Maugham KC, in respect of allegations set out in an article published by the Good Law Project in August last year, and in social media posts by Maugham, now seems a good moment to update my Table of Failure and Futility (ToFF).

[Shurely ‘table of legal victories and exercise of sage judgment’? Ed]

Maugham and the GLP have now crowdfunded an impressive total of £3,389,487 since 1 January 2021. But, somewhat less impressively, all that they have achieved with this moolah (to date) is:

  • two now irrelevant court wins on Net Zero, in 2022 and early 2024, that did not lead to any significant change in the then Tory government’s policies before the change of government in July 2024;
  • the overturning of a Shrewsbury Town Council planning decision, in 2023;
  • the funding of one of law firm Bindmans’ defamation cases, in 2023; and
  • a £25K settlement with a US law firm, in a trivial case about transgenderism, in 2025.

Of that £3.4 million, a stonking £722,533 has been crowdfunded from the so-called ‘trans community’ and its allies to support the GLP’s ongoing efforts to undo the Supreme Court’s momentous April 2025 ruling in For Women Scotland (which clarified that references to ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 mean biological sex). But all that they have achieved (so far) is a proper drubbing in the High Court in February, and a £300,000 bill from the EHRC for legal costs. Well, if the Supreme Court says it is the law, it is the law.

While the GLP say that Maugham will “vigorously defend Ms Phillimore’s claim”, at the time of writing there is no sign of any associated crowdfunder. Maybe, on this occasion, the opinionated Maugham will be putting his own money where his mouth is. I guess there’s a first time for everything.

Whatever, you can donate to Sarah Phillimore’s crowdfunder here.

Posted in Crowdfunding, Sex & Gender | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Walking dead: Keir Starmer, Lauren Edwards and the new but identically flawed NHS-assisted suicide PMB

Posted on June 15, 2026 by wonkypolicywonk

So, Labour MP Lauren Edwards – who, as noted on this blog last month, came second in the recent Private Members’ Bill (PMB) ballot – has opted to re-introduce Kim Leadbeater’s deeply flawed and defeated NHS-assisted suicide Bill in the House of Commons. Announcing her somewhat surprising decision on her website yesterday, Edwards said “this is a rare opportunity to present legislation that can make a real difference not just to my constituents in Rochester and Strood, but also for the country.”

We don’t know whether Edwards has been infected by the reported frenzy inside Downing Street to somehow secure Sir Keir ‘you’re fired!’ Starmer a ‘legacy’ before he makes way for Andy Burnham or Wes Streeting, or has simply seized a flukey opportunity to make herself better known beyond her constituency (a low bar). But, either way, her bold if not hubristic move seems destined to end in disappointment.

Despite Kim Leadbeater having ‘won’ the coveted top slot in the 2024 PMB Ballot, her flawed and therefore divisive NHS-assisted suicide Bill would most likely have died the lonely and painful death suffered by almost all PMBs (other than those handed out by ministers), had Starmer’s personal commitment to the NHS bumping off a few grannies not ensured his Government’s supposed ‘neutrality’. This chicanery enabled the Bill to stagger on to the House of Lords, where in April it was belatedly put out of our misery by the admirable Tanni Grey-Thompson and others.

Unfortunately for Edwards, the integrity-challenged Starmer may well not be Prime Minister by the time her Bill comes up for its Second Reading, in September or October, and is even less likely to be Prime Minister by the time it reaches its final stages in the Commons, in early 2027. So, as Wes Streeting is opposed to NHS-assisted suicide, and Andy Burnham is characteristically ambivalent on the matter, it seems unlikely her PMB will benefit, as Leadbeater’s PMB unquestionably did, from government ‘neutrality’.

Indeed, it seems much more likely that, come late 2026 or early 2027, Prime Minister Andy Burnham or Prime Minister Wes Streeting will (sensibly) decree that spending hundreds of millions of pounds on establishing an NHS service to bump off a few grannies is simply not a priority for his new government.

As another Labour MP (and former health minister), Ashley Dalton, said to the Guardian yesterday: “We have debated this deeply divisive and flawed Bill for over a year, and supporters have refused to listen or to make the necessary changes. We should not be using more of our limited time and political capital on something that simply isn’t safe or a priority for the people who put us in power.”

Furthermore, as noted on this blog in April, unlike Leadbeater, who benefited from a two-year parliamentary session, Edwards will have only one year to get her PMB through Parliament. And there is little if any reason to think opponents of her PMB in the House of Lords will be cowed by her legally illiterate assertion that “it is a fundamental democratic principle that the elected chamber, the House of Commons, should decide what does and does not become law in this country.”

Whatever, Edwards and the 19 other lucky ‘winners’ of the PMB Ballot will present their Bills to the House of Commons on Wednesday.

Update, 18 June: Lauren Edwards ‘presented’ the title – but not the text – of her Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill in the House of Commons yesterday, and the Bill’s Second Reading is now scheduled for 11 September, the last sitting Friday before the three-week party conference recess.

Update, 29 July: Newbie prime minister Andy Burnham has today given a strong hint that his government will not be as supportive of the PMB introduced by Lauren Edwards as Keir Starmer and his government were of Kim Leadbeater’s unsuccessful PMB. Asked by a journalist whether he supports assisted dying, Burnham reportedly stated:

I take the view that the debate [on assisted dying] – and I don’t say that there shouldn’t be a debate at some point about those issues – personally, I think there’s something that needs to happen first.

That is the fixing of the funding of palliative care and social care. I think it is very challenging to introduce that wider debate in a context of people not receiving that care and having the peace of mind about that care. That’s the way I kind of see this, and that’s the position that I will stick to.

Posted in politics, State-assisted suicide | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Bonkers in Brighton

Posted on June 12, 2026 by wonkypolicywonk

As if crowdfunding and blowing almost £720,000 on trying and – so far – failing to undo the Supreme Court’s April 2025 ruling in the case of For Women Scotland isn’t bonkers enough – because, if the Supreme Court says it is the law, it is the law – this week the Good Law Project, led by infamous turd polisher Jolyon Maugham KC, announced they are going to take on the funding of what an NHS Patient Safety Investigation has concluded is the “inappropriate prescription of medications to children and young people” by a GP practice in the Brighton area.

Yesterday, the GLP announced they plan to spend “a big five-figure sum” on funding “access to gender affirming private [sic] healthcare for at least ten trans minor patients of [Brighton] WellBN whose treatment has been withdrawn and whose financial need is greatest for three years or until those children turn 18 (whichever is the sooner).” And they launched a crowdfunder (without a specified target) to ensure “we can support even more [sic] trans kids to receive the medical care they urgently need. With your help, we’ll do everything in our power to protect them.”

What the GLP fails to mention, however, is that the decision by NHS England and the local NHS Trust to instruct the Brighton WellBN GP Practice to “stop prescribing hormonal medications to children under 18 years outside of NHS policy and guidance”, to “not resume offering specialist gender care to children under 18 years” and ensure that “the Practice’s public facing materials make this clear with immediate effect” follows the conclusion of a Patient Safety Investigation that Brighton WellBN Practice was “inappropriately prescribing medications to children and young people for the clinical indication of gender dysphoria”, and that “potential harm has been caused to the 78 children and young people who are within the scope of the Investigation”.

The Investigation’s key findings are quite astonishing:

As for the children and young people in question, the Investigation report states:

Gender dysphoria and incongruence require specialist care. Therefore, to receive NHS care and support, an individual needs to be under the care of one of the nationally commissioned specialist services.

If not already receiving care from specialist gender services, those in scope of the Investigation will have up to the 31 July 2026 to consider whether to accept being referred to these services, or not.

So, no one is being denied appropriate NHS care and support – rather, they are being protected from harm by professionally incompetent doctors. And potential donors to the GLP’s crowdfunder have not been given the material information they would need to make an informed decision about whether or not to donate (and, if so, how much).

Yet for Maugham and the GLP, the Patient Safety Investigation is simply part of “the ideological crusade that this Government has embarked upon against trans people”.

Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it infamy!

Utterly bonkers.

Posted in Sex & Gender | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Better off dead: the NHS-assisted suicide PMB

Posted on May 22, 2026 by wonkypolicywonk

As noted on this blog in April, supporters of NHS-assisted suicide reacted to the long, slow death of Kim Leadbeater’s inadequately scrutinised Private Members’ Bill (PMB) in the House of Lords by revealing a somewhat undemocratic plan to “table an identical PMB in the next parliamentary session”.

And yesterday, with the new parliamentary session having kicked off last week with the ludicrously anachronistic pomp of the King’s Speech, the embarrassment that is British parliamentary democracy in the 21st Century cranked into action to select the 20 MPs who will have the best chance of their chosen PMB progressing through Parliament, as they will get priority for the limited amount of debating time made available over the session.

Some 500 backbench MPs had entered the PMB ballot, but of the 20 who had their numbered wooden ball drawn from a glass bowl in reverse order by two white-gloved flunkies, only those who randomly secured one of the top seven slots stand any real chance of repeating/bettering Kim Leadbeater’s admittedly impressive feat of almost getting her PMB into the Statute Book.

Actual footage of British democracy in action, 21 May 2026

Unfortunately for those in favour of Leadbeater’s deeply flawed model of NHS-assisted suicide, the top slot was ‘won’ by Sir Desmond Swayne (Conservative), a vocal opponent. But two vocal supporters, Lauren Edwards (Labour) and Andrew George (Liberal Democrat), ‘won’ the second and fourth slots, while two other MPs who voted in favour of Leadbeater’s PMB, Luke Evans (Conservative) and Jessica Toale (Labour), ‘won’ the fifth and seventh slots.

The 20 MPs drawn in the ballot now have until 17 June to choose a PMB from the many that will be offered to them by Dignity in Dying and other noisy campaign groups, and at the time of writing none of the top seven have revealed their intentions, with Andrew George telling the Guardian he will consult his constituents over the next fortnight before making his decision:

This is a great opportunity for West Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. That’s why I want to take a little time to listen to what constituents say before finally making my decision about which option would be best.

However, Jess Asato, a Labour MP who strongly opposed Leadbeater’s PMB, told the Guardian it would be a distraction to bring it back:

We know the assisted dying Bill is flawed and unsafe because the experts like the royal medical colleges and the Equality and Human Rights Commission have told us. The last thing our Party should be focusing on right now is continuing to debate this deeply divisive, flawed and risky Bill, rather than delivering on the priorities of voters.

Amen to that. As noted on this blog earlier this month, it is increasingly clear that ordinary people have had more than enough of the woke mélange of ‘trans rights’; the roll-out and rigid enforcement of 20 mph speed limits; the prioritisation of overly rigid, self-harming Net Zero targets (that will make negligible difference to overall climate change); the introduction of NHS-assisted suicide; the reforestation of Uganda; and other progressive-badged policies pushed on out-of-touch, technocratic politicians by obsessive campaign groups and their lobbyists.

[Update, 8 June: Indeed, a recent MRP poll conducted for think tank The Other Half suggests there is no public mandate in any of the 632 parliamentary constituencies in Great Britain for reviving Leadbeater’s NHS-assisted suicide PMB and then using the Parliament Acts to bypass the House of Lords and push the flawed Bill into law.

So, if Lauren Edwards, Andrew George, Luke Evans and Jessica Toale have any sense, they will decide to secure their footnote in history by opting for a PMB providing for some worthy but relatively minor and non-contentious legal reform.]

Posted in Democracy, politics | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment