Road to Nowhere: Traffic update (4)

Posted on October 28, 2026 by wonkypolicywonk

With the fab feminists at Sex Matters set to do battle in the High Court next week, against the fat cats of the City of London Corporation (usable reserves: £518.7 million), over the Hampstead Heath Ponds, it’s time for a quick 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 – Good Law Project, Liberty, TransLucent 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.

Because “transphobia is the engine that pulls the train of fascism”. Or something.

However, despite having since crowdfunded a combined total of almost £969,000 from the ‘trans community’ and its allies to fund their thrilling road trips to Nowhere, none of them have got very far. Indeed, only two of them – Good Law Project and TransLucent – are still on the road.

Both Good Law Project and TransLucent applied to intervene in the case brought by Sex Matters that will be heard by the High Court next week. And, by this morning, TransLucent had, since July 2025, crowdfunded £26,792 from 768 midwits happy to swallow their wild assertion that Sex Matters’ legal challenge is based on “a narrow reading of the For Women Scotland judgment, [namely that] the Equality Act 2010 defines ‘woman’ solely by biological sex”.

Then, this afternoon, Mr Justice Linden granted TransLucent permission to intervene, on the basis that “the proposed legal submissions on behalf of TransLucent do seem to me to add to the arguments which are being put forward by the parties … I am also persuaded that the Court should receive evidence of the perspective of the organisation and the personal perspectives of trans users of the ponds through the witness statements which are sought to be adduced”. However, he refused Good Law Project (GLP) permission to intervene, stating:

In contrast, the proposed legal submissions on behalf of GLP do not seem to me to add anything to what will be submitted by the parties and TransLucent … and I do not consider that the Court will be assisted by the numerous additional witness statements which GLP seek to adduce.

This slap in the face for Jolyon Maugham KC and his GLP follows swiftly on the Court of Appeal having thrown a large bucket of cold water over their attempt to appeal the legal spanking they were given in February, when the High Court comprehensively dismissed their supposedly swaggerdocious legal challenge to the EHRC’s Interim Update about the Supreme Court’s ruling in For Women Scotland. Though, as ever, there has since been a (financial) silver lining for the GLP, in the form of some 725 new donations, totalling more than £30,000, to their previously moribund crowdfunder in support of their appeal.

Meanwhile, there’s no news on the GLP’s threatened legal action against Virgin Active, seemingly funded by their Fighting Fund for Trans Rights crowdfunder, launched the day after the Supreme Court ruling in For Women Scotland. GLP sent a letter before action to Virgin Active on 15 January, but ten months on there’s no evidence of them having yet filed a High Court claim, and as far as I can tell Virgin Active have not amended, let alone repealed, the August 2025 policy change that so outraged Maugham and the GLP. It seems the GLP only favour transparency when it suits them.

Nor is there any news on the GLP’s threatened legal action against the England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB). In recent months, the flow of donations to the Fighting Fund for Trans Rights crowdfunder has dwindled to a trickle – just £291 since June. Nevertheless, since April 2025 the crowdfunder has raised almost £156,000. Which to my mind is a lot of money to send a few letters before action and then do nothing.

Similarly, both the GLP and TransLucent have yet to file a High Court claim in their proposed legal challenges to the new EHRC Code of Practice, in force as statutory guidance since 5 August. And yet, despite this lack of action, they’ve already crowdfunded a combined total of £79,420. Ker-ching!

So you could always even things up a bit by donating to Sex Matters’ crowdfunder.

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

No alarms and no surprises: Jolyon Maugham’s legal swagger fails to impress the Court of Appeal

Posted on October 17, 2026 by wonkypolicywonk

(With apologies to Radiohead)

Early last month, wealthy activist tax lawyer Jolyon Maugham KC had a little rant about “the so-called justice system”, and how “English judges tell us time and time again that they do not want to listen to trans people”. And a couple of weeks later he had another, this time about how “Britain, in its treatment of trans people, has become ugly and shameful”, with the “notorious” Supreme Court ruling in For Women Scotland simply “emblematic of the hostility towards trans people in much of the so-called justice system”.

So at least Maugham will not have been surprised when, on Thursday, the Court of Appeal threw a big bucket of cold water over the Good Law Project’s attempt to appeal the legal spanking they were given in February, when the High Court comprehensively dismissed their supposedly swaggerdocious legal challenge to the EHRC’s Interim Update about the Supreme Court’s landmark April 2025 ruling in For Women Scotland.

Unpersuaded to grant permission to appeal on the papers, but seemingly willing to bend over backwards to appear fair-minded, Lady Justice Andrews of the Court of Appeal did grant the three individual claimants in the case – a transwoman, a transman, and a woman with a difference of sexual development (DSD) – an oral permission hearing. But, in doing so, she didn’t sound terribly convinced about the merits of their appeal:

I am not currently persuaded that any of the grounds [of appeal] advanced has a real prospect of success; the [High Court] Judge’s reasoning, particularly at [paragraph 79], appears compelling. However in the interests of fairness and open justice, and bearing in mind the nature of the issues involved and their importance to the applicants, I consider that they should be afforded an opportunity to persuade the court orally that they do.

The parties are encouraged to liaise to agree a timetable, bearing in mind that the hearing is a permission hearing only and will take no more than half a day.

In other words, the three individual claimants in the GLP’s claim failed to persuade the Lady Justice to grant them permission to appeal on the papers, which she’d been considering for four months, but have been granted a second chance to try to do so at a brief, oral permission hearing. And, in a separate Order, Lady Justice Andrews dismissed the GLP’s attempt to appeal the High Court’s ruling in February that, unlike the three individual claimants, the GLP themselves lacked standing to bring the claim:

[The High Court judge] refused the applicant (GLP) permission to proceed with a claim for judicial review on grounds of lack of standing. In my judgment the appeal against that decision has no reasonable prospect of success, and there is no other compelling reason for the matter to be heard.

The question whether GLP had a sufficient interest to bring this claim was a value judgment for the Judge, of a type with which an appellate court will rarely interfere. He applied the correct legal test and he did so in the light of all the circumstances of this case. There is no basis for any suggestion that he failed to have regard to any relevant evidence or applied some elevated threshold. The evaluation of whether GLP had a reasonable concern in this particular matter was fact-sensitive and the Judge decided, for good and sufficient reasons, that it did not, irrespective of its track record in other contexts of supporting trans issues.

The Judge was in the best possible position to evaluate the evidence and his decision was reasonably open to him on the facts. It is not “plainly wrong”. He was entitled to conclude that a campaigning body such as GLP which was not directly affected by the [EHRC Interim Update] did not have a sufficient interest to claim judicial review. It must be borne in mind that the [Interim Update] was no longer operational. It is clear from the skeleton argument that the grounds amount to little more than a disagreement with the Judge’s evaluation.

So, not much for the GLP to crow about. At best, their supposedly swaggerdocious legal challenge is now hanging on by a very thin thread. But, more likely, it’s as deceased as the ‘pining for the fjords’ parrot in that Monty Python sketch. Nevertheless, the GLP’s ‘trans rights’ lead, Jess O’Thomson, promptly put out an upbeat but less than candid email to some or all of the “nearly one million people” in the GLP’s database. And, within 24 hours, the GLP’s previously moribund crowdfunder in support of their struggling appeal had harvested some 450 new donations totalling £22,600. Ker-ching!

That wave of new donations takes the total sum that Maugham and the GLP have crowdfunded from the ‘trans community’ and its allies for their legal challenge to the EHRC’s long since defunct Interim Guidance to a stonking £623,751 (made up of the £489,858 raised by the original crowdfunder, launched in late April 2025, and the £133,893 now raised by the appeal crowdfunder, launched in February 2026).

Yet, apart from 18 months of (false) hope, all that the more than 15,800 donors have so far got for their average donation of some £39 is the prospect of a half-day oral permission hearing before a clearly somewhat sceptical Court of Appeal judge. I’m not sure you’d call that ‘value for money’.

Indeed, the total sum raised by the GLP from their five crowdfunders in support of their various efforts since April 2025 to undo the Supreme Court’s ruling in For Women Scotland now stands at a colossal £830,533, somewhat more than twice their total income from crowdfunding in their financial year 2024-25 (£322,000), and already some £25K more than the £804,952 they raised from nine crowdfunders over two years of Brexit-related lawfare in 2017-19. Which also achieved nothing. Zilch. Nada. Rien.

However, even that fruitless £830K is only part of the sad story of Maugham and the GLP’s transgenderism-related lawfare, for which they have raised more than £1.42 million from 17 crowdfunders since late 2020. And, as previously noted on this blog, to my mind, £1.42 million is a lot of (other people’s) money to have squandered on virtually fuck-all over six years of ‘Angry Dad’ lawfare on transgenderism.

Legal swagger? Legal swag, more like.

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

Is the Khan-Maugham bromance going moobs up?

Posted on October 7, 2026 by wonkypolicywonk

Spare a thought for wealthy activist tax lawyer Jolyon Maugham KC, who has just had his Crimbo ruined by his erstwhile mate, Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London.

Despite me having long ago asked the Good Law Project to stop processing (and delete) my personal data – such as my email address – today I received an email from Jolyon urging me to use the GLP’s data-harvesting tool to email Sadiq Khan to tell him that, if he’s the trans ally he has claimed to be, he can’t just switch his support on and off, so must “pull the plug” on what the London Standard calls the “magical” Harry Potter-themed Crimbo lights in Oxford Street.

The email that Jolyon wants me to send to Sadiq Khan states:

As a supporter of Good Law Project, I’m extremely disappointed to see that you’ve given the go ahead for a Harry Potter-themed Christmas lights takeover on Oxford Street. JK Rowling has boasted that some of the money she makes from the franchise will go directly towards her anti-trans campaign. Giving that brand free publicity on London’s biggest high street hands her a massive megaphone and a pay cheque.

You’ve previously said that you’re “fed up with trans people being at the centre of a cruel cultural war”. So why help fund and platform the person driving it?

If you’re a trans ally, you can’t switch your support on and off. Please drop City Hall’s support for this display and replace it with Christmas lights that are welcoming and safe for everybody.

Sadiq Khan having “given the go ahead” for the transphobic Crimbo lights is putting it a bit strongly, given that there is no evidence of Khan or City Hall having played any part at all in the decision, which appears to have been the sole responsibility of the New West End Company, a business partnership of more than 800 retailers, hoteliers, restauranteurs and property owners in the West End that provides gainful employment to almost as many exotically-named and photogenic people as the GLP. Responding to the GLP’s puerile campaign, a City Hall spokesperson is reported as saying:

The Christmas lights on Oxford Street are not arranged by the Mayor or the Oxford Street Development Corporation, and this is a matter for the New West End Company and local businesses.

Nevertheless, in a subtitled video posted on Instagram and Facebook [in since deleted posts, as well as in a non-subtitled version of the same video that remains on Facebook], the GLP’s Senior Digital Communications & Video Producer, Eliza Pitkin, famed winner of the Longest Job Title 2026 award, informed the GLP’s midwit supporters that:

I don’t think Sadiq Khan is a trans ally. and I’m gonna tell you why.

JK Rowling is gonna use the money that she makes from the new Harry Potter series to fund anti-trans work. I mean, this woman.

Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, has regularly told us what a trans ally he is, how he wants to make London a safe space for trans people and so on. He has just green-lit for Harry Potter-themed Christmas lights to go up in London, supposedly to advertise the new series of Harry Potter that’s gonna make the money for the author to fund her anti-trans work.

It’s not looking like the tweets are lining up with the actions, is it? But there you go. That’s how I feel about it.

Oh, Sadiq. Do you support trans, or are you a monster? I mean, this woman. You do know, don’t you, that failing to support trans makes you fascist adjacent? Just like the Supreme Court judges who – *checks notes* – abandoned their judicial oath in service of pleasing their wealthy friends like JK Rowling and [That’s enough. Ed].

#ChristmasLightsThatAreWelcomingAndSafeForEverybody

Update, 8 October: Oh dear. The GLP have already deleted Eliza’s subtitled rant from Instagram and Facebook. However, a non-subtitled version of the same video remains on Facebook (and I have made a copy). More than 4,000 midwits have emailed Sadiq Khan, but I can’t see him being that bovvered – as recently as August he happily celebrated the imminent arrival on Oxford Street of the UK’s biggest Harry Potter shop, and it seems the big switch-on of the transphobic Harry Potter Crimbo lights is scheduled to coincide with the opening of that new Harry Potter mega-shop (4 November).

Update, 10 October: Whoa! It’s only three days since Jolyon emailed me, urging me to tell Sadiq Khan he’s a monster, or something. And now Jolyon has emailed me again, urging me to … tell Sadiq Khan he’s a monster! This is one helluva conscious uncoupling. There is a Walworth of my mind, and in it Jolyon is throwing Sadiq’s heavily-scissored clothes from an upstairs window.

The text of Jolyon’s latest email to me is slightly different to that of his first, three long days ago. It’s also sent with ‘best wishes’, rather than ‘in solidarity’. And the ‘Email now’ and ‘I’m in’ buttons are yellow, instead of pink. Maybe the GLP’s bulging database of “nearly one million people” – evidently including me – is divided into a ‘pink list’ and a ‘yellow list’? And, when things are really bad, Jolyon emerges from the toilet to yell at his minions: “We’re going pink AND yellow, people!”

But the email that Jolyon wants me to send to Sadiq Khan is exactly the same as before. And there’s only so many times I can refuse Jolyon’s advances, without feeling mean. So I’ve sent my email to the Mayor, via the GLP’s data-harvesting tool, and look forward to hearing what he has to say for himself.

However – and I don’t mind if you call me fair-minded – in the interest of factual accuracy, I have also submitted a Freedom of Information request to City Hall, asking what – if any – part the Mayor played in the decision of the New West End Company to ruin Jolyon’s Crimbo by stuffing JK Rowling’s stocking with used bank notes.

Because, given that Sadiq Khan appears to have no authority to tell the New West End Company what kind of Crimbo lights to put up, what do Jolyon, Eliza and the rest of the super-woke GLP expect Khan to do in response to their silly campaign? Turn up with a cherry-picker and rip the Harry Potter lights down? Self-immolate outside Selfridges?

Update, 14 October: Oh dear. There will be more wailing, rending of garments and gnashing of teeth at the Maugham mansion tonight, on account of Sadiq Khan and the people that Maugham hates even more than the fascist adjacent feminists at Sex Matters – the actually fascist tech bros at Palantir – having agreed to drop their legal tussle over a Metropolitan Police contract.

I’m now expecting at least one email from Jolyon about this in the coming days. But will there be an Instagram/Facebook/Bluesky video in which Eliza Pitkin tells us how she feels about this latest betrayal? I mean, this Mayor.

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Is the Polanski-Maugham bromance going boobs up?

Posted on October 6, 2026 by wonkypolicywonk

Back in August, I noted on this blog that infamous animal batterer and wealthy activist tax lawyer, Jolyon Maugham KC, had teamed up with failed actor and one-time boob-enlarging hypnotist David Paulden (aka Zack Polanski) to legally defend the ever more crank-filled and Palestine-obsessed Green Party against a small group of feminist Green Party members who believe in biological reality.

In October 2025, the Green Party cancelled – at less than 48 hours’ notice – a stall at their annual conference that had previously been successfully applied for by the group Green Women’s Declaration (#ForWomenAndPlanet). The latter then launched a legal challenge, claiming that the Green Party had discriminated against them because of their beliefs about sex. In March this year, they told the Times:

The way the Green Party has been acting is akin to a witch-hunt, purging people with gender-critical views. We are middle-aged ladies with leaflets who wanted to go inside the conference last year and talk about these issues. The cancellation of our stall was simply the Party’s leadership saying, ‘We can’t allow these women’s voices inside conference’.

On 27 August this year, Maugham’s Good Law Project announced that they will defend the Green Party in court against the legal challenge brought by Green Women’s Declaration (GWD). And they launched a crowdfunder – with an initial target of £40,000 – in support of that legal defence.

As journalist Jo Bartosch noted back in March, the basis for the Green Party machine’s last-minute cancellation of the GWD’s October 2025 conference stall appears to have been an internal document, ‘Guidance to identify queerphobia’, adopted by the Party in 2023. That ‘guidance’ provides that any expression of gender-critical beliefs is discriminatory – so must not be tolerated by the Party.

Sound familiar? Well it should, because in recent weeks Paulden/Polanski and his Green Party have been catching flak for a motion tabled to and debated and passed at this year’s annual conference, held in Brighton last weekend, to adopt a policy equating Zionism – the movement for a Jewish state – with racism (as well as calling for Israel to somehow be abolished and ‘replaced’ by a single Palestinian state).

In short, the passing of the motion means that any expression of support for Zionism is discriminatory – so must not be tolerated by the Party.

Some Jewish members of the Green Party have reportedly expressed concern this will mean they could face disciplinary action simply for belonging to Jewish organisations, including synagogues, that support Zionism. And, as Jonathan Freedland noted in the Guardian last week, that “includes almost every synagogue, or synagogue movement, in Britain and indeed the world”.

Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. But I suggest they might find it very hard to get a stall at the Party’s annual conference – as the Green Women’s Declaration group did again at this month’s annual conference. And, well, members of the GWD group certainly have faced disciplinary action for having unauthorised opinions.

Today’s Guardian reports Paulden/Polanski stating, in response to such concerns:

Antisemitism and criticism of the Israeli state are, and must always be, completely distinct – blurring the line between the two is not only wrong but antisemitic, and makes Jewish people less safe. It’s our role as a movement for justice to protect both the rights of Palestinians and our Jewish communities here in the UK. As leader I will not accept any exclusion, or refusal to engage with anyone, because of the religious or communal body they are part of [my emphasis].

But you have to wonder whether he ran that last sentence past the Green Party’s legal representatives – namely, Jolyon Maugham KC and his Good Law Project. Because the Green Party is clearly refusing to ‘engage with’ the Green Women’s Declaration group – a communal body of Party members and supporters who believe in something as simple as human beings not being like clown fish.

Interestingly, after the usual initial wave of donations, the Good Law Project’s above-mentioned crowdfunder in support of their legal defence of the Green Party is currently struggling to reach it’s initial target of £40,000. Launched on 27 August, by mid-September the crowdfunder had raised £18,705 from 977 donors. But since then it has flatlined, with just a further 107 donations totalling £2,158.

That could be at least partly due to the fact that Maugham and the GLP have done relatively little to promote the crowdfunder to their supporters. Having deleted his X and Bluesky accounts earlier this year, Maugham has yet to promote the crowdfunder on his Instagram account, while the GLP have done so only once – on 27 August. (That said, the GLP have promoted it more recently on their Facebook, Bluesky and X accounts.)

Whatever, it’s going to be an interesting day in court. Because, as Suzanne Moore noted on her Substack on Sunday, after the ‘Zionism’ motion had been passed by the conference:

This is shameful, shameful stuff. Now every other party – especially Labour – has to say it would never go into coalition with such racist opportunists. And I pray to God that Polanski has to recycle his CV one more time.

‘When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.’

The Greens have been showing us who they are for some time now. On this dark day, I only hope more people see it.

Update, 11 October: Clearly feeling the pressure from internal critics such as the somewhat hypocritical Caroline Lucas – who failed to show any leadership on the rather more consequential issue of the UK’s membership of the the EU when it really mattered, between 2010 and late 2015 – Paulden/Polanski has now said, in the formerly adoring Guardian, that he “will meet any group within our Party that fears victimisation, to understand exactly what they need in order to feel safe and welcome.”

So I imagine there will soon be a few feminists who believe in biological reality knocking at Paulden/Polanski’s door. But will his Party’s lawyers – Jolyon Maugham KC and his Good Law Project – allow him to meet with them?

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Assisted dying: emotional blackmail no longer working

Posted on September 11, 2026 by wonkypolicywonk

So, the NHS-Assisted Suicide Bill that just will not die is back in the House of Commons later today, with Labour’s Lauren Edwards MP set to kick off the Second Reading of the very same – so identically flawed – Bill that Labour’s Kim Leadbeater MP failed to sneak into the Statute Book via the ‘back door’ of the equally flawed Private Members’ Bill process during the two years of the directionless Keir Starmer government.

In November 2024, Leadbeater’s Bill passed its Second Reading with a majority of 55, but by June 2025, when MPs gave the Bill its Third and final reading in the Commons by 314 votes to 291 to send it off to the House of Lords, that majority had fallen to just 23.

It’s unclear how many MPs have changed their position on the Bill since then, but earlier this week Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch hit the nail on the head when indicating that, despite supporting the principle of state assisted suicide, she will once again vote against the Bill, on the grounds that it is not fit for purpose:

One of the things that has gone wrong in our country is how we make laws. Not based on whether something works or not, but how it makes us feel. As legislators, we have to do more than that. It is not enough to ask what we want the law to achieve; we need to question whether the system we build to achieve it will work.

However, despite having said in July that the government needs to fix the palliative and social care systems before introducing NHS assisted suicide, newbie prime minister Andy Burnham will be taking the soft option of abstaining. Apparently, he’s now happy for his government to just go with the flow, and ignore the consistently expressed concerns of the hospice charities and others, including many of his own MPs.

As is the former TV personality and prominent supporter of Kim Leadbeater’s Bill, Esther Rantzen, who was given less than six months to live three years ago, in 2023. Somewhat predictably, Rantzen popped up in the rabidly pro-assisted suicide Guardian yesterday to conveniently ‘reveal’ that she is now “too physically fragile” to travel to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland. Which is odd, because Rantzen’s family told the Guardian the very same thing 18 months ago, in March 2025, when Leadbeater’s Bill was at a crucial stage.

The use of such emotional blackmail is no way to debate and legislate for significant social change in the 21st Century. Burnham should step out from behind his inadequate fig-leaf of supposed government ‘neutrality’, and – as I suggested in 2024 – put the issue to bed, for now at least, by establishing a Royal Commission on assisted dying, or by asking the Law Commission to examine the issue and make recommendations for legal reform.

Update, 3pm: Well, some sanity at last. After almost five hours of debate, MPs have just voted 286 to 270 against giving the Bill its Second Reading. So, the assisted dying Bill is finally dead. Not that you’d know it from the Guardian politics live blog, which was determined to have it both ways:

(The first vote, won by a majority of 75, was simply a procedural vote on whether to now have the actual vote on the Bill. Parliamentary democracy in the 21st Century, innit. If the Guardian politics live blog team would like a tutorial, my rates are very reasonable.)

It’s fair to say that Lauren Edwards MP – who was given a rough ride when opening the debate – and the pressure group Dignity in Dying (formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Legalisation Society) have not taken defeat well, accusing MPs of having “dropped the ball today” and characterising the vote as “a failure of our democracy”. But Edwards and Dignity in Dying arguably brought about their own defeat by hubristically insisting that MPs pass her Bill without amendment before sending it on to the Lords a second time, simply so that they could then try to invoke the Parliament Acts if the Lords did not do what they wanted.

Yet it was Dignity in Dying who chose to use the deeply flawed and chronically anachronistic Private Members’ Bill process to try to force assisted dying into the Statute Book, rather than do the hard work of convincing one or more of the major political parties to commit to NHS-assisted suicide in a general election manifesto. To my mind, it’s rather telling that Labour did not make that commitment in July 2024, despite the personal commitment of Keir Starmer. And, of course, Andy Burnham has no electoral mandate of his own – he’s only Prime Minister because a majority of Labour MPs belatedly realised that Keir Starmer is a technocrat, not a politician.

Meanwhile, some bloke called Gordon has posted on social media: “I hope we can all now come together to radically improve end of life care”. If only someone like Gordon had been in a position to do something radical about the funding of end of life care in the UK, eh?

Maybe it would have been better for someone like Gordon to put upwards of £30 billion towards funding the UK’s ludicrously under-resourced palliative care system, rather than towards helping George Bush’s US of A to slaughter hundreds of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq, even though Afghanistan was a basket case posing no military threat to anyone, and Iraq not only had nothing to do with 9/11 but did not possess the mythical weapons of mass destruction that gave Alastair Campbell and others such a hard-on.

Yes, these things are connected, people! You need to get intersectional!

Posted in State-assisted suicide | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

The Jollyon Green Giant

Posted on August 27, 2026 by wonkypolicywonk

(With apologies to The Kingsmen)

It’s not easy to imagine a nuttier combo of ‘late developer leftie’ nutjobs than former boob-enlarging hypnotist David Paulden (aka Zack Polanski) and former tax (avoidance) lawyer Jolyon Maugham KC. So it’s entirely fitting that Maugham and his Good Law Project’s latest crowdfunder – their 101st lawfare-related crowdfunder since 2017 – is in support of the GLP’s legal defence of Paulden/Polanski’s Green Party machine against a small group of feminist Green Party members armed with little more than the facts of life.

If I were Paulden/Polanski, I think I would have wanted to be legally represented by an actual law firm, ideally with a track record of success in ‘defending trans rights’. However, given how much money the Green Party has been having to shell out on lawyers since Paulden/Polanski became leader, I can see why they’ve gone for the cheap option.

But again, if I were Paulden/Polanski, I’d still want my free lawyers to have some sort of track record of success with the law thingy, rather than just the crowdfunding thingy.

When it comes to crowdfunding, Maugham and the GLP are in a league of their own – as noted on this blog earlier this month, they’ve crowdfunded a stonking £6.762 million since 2017. But, as barrister and blogger Matthew Scott also noted earlier this month, their “record of success can politely be described as patchy”.

Jolyon Maugham KC, dressed in the clothes and spectacles of a polite white tax lawyer

More to the point, their record of success in transgenderism-related lawfare, for which they’ve raised some £1.376 million from 17 crowdfunders since late 2020, is not even ‘patchy’. It’s practically a blank page.

Indeed, to my mind, £1.376 million is a lot of (other people’s) money to have squandered on virtually fuck-all over six years of ‘Angry Dad’ lawfare.

But maybe Maugham and the GLP – as well as Paulden/Polanski and the Green Party – will strike lucky this time. Well, even a stopped clock is right occasionally.

Posted in Crowdfunding, politics, Sex & Gender | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Labour’s 2024 manifesto: Less Than Zero

Posted on August 22, 2026 by wonkypolicywonk

(With apologies to Elvis Costello)

So, trade unions are reportedly worried that the Government’s plan for zero-hours contracts will break the Labour Party’s July 2024 manifesto pledge.

Which it will. Because, as I’ve said repeatedly on this blog and elsewhere, the manifesto pledge was utter bollocks. And that’s because, as I’ve said repeatedly since at least 2013, it’s simply not practicable or desirable to ‘ban’ zero-hours contracts.

But Labour MPs and their 21-year-old employment policy wonks with a first in Italian Literature only listen to the trade unions. And the trade unions are led by nutjobs who believe a woman can have a penis, a man can breastfeed a newborn baby, and the government can ban zero-hours contracts.

That’s it. That’s the blog post.

Welcome to the working week. You got to do it till you’re through it, so you better get to it.

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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.

[NB: In late September, I stumbled across a GLP crowdfunder – in support of an appeal to the First-tier Tribunal against a decision by the Information Commissioner, about Palantir’s contract with the NHS – of which I was previously unaware (possibly because the GLP appear to have done very little to actively promote it). This crowdfunder may have been launched in September, but seems more likely to have been launched in mid-April, when the appeal was filed. In which case, what I thought was the GLP’s 100th lawfare-related crowdfunder was in fact their 101st, and accordingly some of the figures in this post require adjustment (though not by much, because as of 30 September the crowdfunder has raised only £12,172 from 716 donors).]

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 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. Just as 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 he and the GLP were 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 [update: now 12 in the first nine 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 , , , , | 3 Comments

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 , , , , , | 2 Comments

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.

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