So, tomorrow, Jolyon Maugham KC and his (Not Very) Good Law Project will stagger to the end of their 2024-25 reporting year (1 February 2024 to 31 January 2025).

As documented on this blog in December, it’s been a miserable and almost entirely unproductive 12 months for the GLP, with four crushing legal defeats in court and another eight threatened or actual legal challenges running into the sand, or simply vanishing into thin air. In October, they shut down the in-house law firm – the Good Law Practice – that Maugham had launched with great fanfare just two years ago. And this month one of the GLP’s pet MPs – Labour’s Clive Lewis – was censured by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards for failing to declare, in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, his role in a crowdfunded legal action by the GLP. As the political gossip website Guido Fawkes notes, even the numptiest MPs “might think twice before signing themselves onto Jolyon’s next mad project after this.”

But the biggest blow – one which may yet prove fatal to a bloated and directionless organisation in terminal decline since its annus horribilis of 2022 – was the demise of the 14-year Tory administration of clowns that, with its inept and catastrophic mishandling of Brexit and then Covid19, had so generously nurtured the GLP for five years after its foundation by Maugham in March 2017. By the start of 2024-25, the GLP had raised a stonking £5.3 million from no fewer than 65 crowdfunders, and in the first five months of the year they launched another eight. But in the seven months since the start of the Starmer era on 4 July, they have launched only three.

In short, while it’s still early days in the likely five-year life of the Labour Government, Jolyon and the GLP seem to be struggling to identify issues on which to hold ‘red power’ to account with crowdfunded legal challenges. Which is hardly surprising, when you think about it. Because, for all his (increasingly evident) faults, Keir Starmer is not “a pound shop Boris Johnson“. And Wes Streeting is not Matt Hancock, even if he is “on the side of Donald Trump” and living rent-free in Jolyon’s head.

Furthermore, with the election of a Labour government, many of the midwits in the #FBPE, #GTTO and #TWAW communities – which collectively threw a total of some £22 million at the GLP between March 2017 and 4 July 2024 – appear to have lost interest in Jolyon’s scattergun approach to lawfare. That it has taken them this long to do so is perhaps a tad surprising. But then they are midwits.

As a result, the GLP’s income from crowdfunding – already way down on the glory years of 2020-21 and 2021-22 – has slumped dramatically since 4 July.

We will have to wait until the GLP produce their 2024-25 annual report to find out whether the change of government has had a similar impact on direct donations, and how reliant the GLP now is on the largesse of multi-millionaire fashion victims. But the sharply diminished returns from crowdfunding suggest that holding ‘red power’ to account is not going to be anywhere near as remunerative as holding ‘blue power’ to account used to be for Jolyon and the GLP’s 40 staffers.

Whatever, the GLP start reporting year 2025-26 with just three open crowdfunders, namely the three launched since 4 July. In contrast, they started 2024-25 with eight open crowdfunders, started 2023-24 with nine, and 2022-23 with eleven. Only one of the three is even vaguely directed at ‘red power’. And all three are flatlining.

The Reform UK data crowdfunder, launched on 9 October with a target of £30K (later raised to £40K), is in support of a threatened but yet to materialise legal challenge aimed at forcing Nigel Farage to improve his Reform UK party’s compliance with the famously dull General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It’s unclear whether Reform even bothered to reply to the GLP’s pre-action protocol letter of 8 October, the GLP haven’t promoted the crowdfunder on X/Twitter or Bluesky – or otherwise mentioned the threatened legal action – since late October, and there have been only seven donations to the crowdfunder since November. It currently stands at £37,553 from 2,017 midwits.

The Grenfell architects crowdfunder, launched on 16 December with a target of £5K, is in support of the GLP’s complaint to the Architects Registration Board (ARB) against the firm of architects involved in the doomed refurbishment of Grenfell Tower. The crowdfunder fails to mention that the firm in question – Studio E – is no longer trading, having gone into liquidation in 2020, and it is far from clear what the GLP’s (unpublished) complaint might achieve, not least because the GLP appear deeply confused about whether it is against Studio E alone, or “the regulator” (i.e. the ARB) and “the wider system and situation”. Nor is it clear why the GLP need to crowdfund £5,000 when – as drily noted by the ARB in its response – making a complaint to the ARB is free. The crowdfunder currently stands at £4,126 from 193 midwits.

The Tagging: Gaie Delap crowdfunder, launched on 19 December with a target of £20K (raised to £30K earlier this week), is in support of keeping convicted Just Stop Oil activist Gaie Delap out of prison, where she had served less than four months of her 20-month prison sentence before being released on 18 November under the discretionary Home Detention Curfew scheme (known as ‘tagging’, with management of the tagging contracted out to the private sector security firm Serco). On 5 December, Delap had been informed she would be recalled to prison, as it had become clear she is unable to wear an ankle tag (for health reasons), and Serco were unable to provide a tag small enough to go on her wrist. The crowdfunder text stated that donations will enable Delap’s legal team at law firm Hodge Jones & Allen to “prepare a judicial review against the Ministry of Justice”. 

On 20 December, Delap was recalled to prison, where she remains. Two ‘case updates’ published by the GLP on their website – separate to the crowdfunder text – on 10 January and 25 January made no mention of any ongoing or prospective judicial review, and Hodge Jones & Allen did not respond to repeated questions about whether a judicial review claim has been initiated, and how much money they have received from the GLP.

However, on 28 January, in an update to the crowdfunder text itself, the GLP revealed that Hodge Jones & Allen sent a pre-action protocol letter before action to the Ministry of Justice on 26 January – that is, a full five weeks after Delap was recalled to prison. And, in yet another ‘case update’ published yesterday, the GLP say that Hodge Jones & Allen “stand ready to issue judicial review proceedings in the High Court as early as next week”. The crowdfunder currently stands at £21,862 from 837 midwits, including a £5,000 donation on 27 December from ‘Dale’, who may or may not be multi-millionaire fashion victim Dale Vince. [Update: On 31 January, Delap was released from prison on Home Detention Curfew, and the crowdfunder was closed.]

Accordingly, it is not easy to see why Rheian Davies, the GLP’s Legal Director, is so confident that 2025 is going to be the GLP’s “biggest year yet”. But time will tell. In the meantime, here – below the exciting missive from the excited Rheian – is my updated Table of Failure & Futility (ToFF), showing the sum raised and outcome achieved (to date) by the 76 crowdfunders launched by the GLP since March 2017.

Updated Table of Failure & Futility

Dark green = clear court win for the GLP; light green = other positive/productive outcome; dark orange = clear court defeat for the GLP; light orange = other negative/unproductive outcome; and grey = still in progress/other.

As noted previously on this blog, there is not a lot of green. And, even where there is, the value of the ‘win’ – in terms of lasting impact – is highly questionable.