Note: First posted on 5 September, this post was periodically revised and updated, until 20 October. Further developments will be addressed in future posts.

As first reported in the Times, on 5 September the Equality & Human Rights Commission (EHRC) submitted its revised, statutory Code of Practice for Services, Public Functions & Associations for consideration and approval by the Minister for Women & Equalities, Bridget Phillipson. Following the Supreme Court ruling of 16 April that “women don’t have willies”, between 20 May and 30 June the EHRC ran a consultation on further revisions to the then draft Code of Practice.

The EHRC received more than 50,000 responses to the consultation, most of them stating, in block capitals, that transwomen are women and Baroness Falkner of the EHRC is a fascist bigot who, with the connivance of health secretary Wes Streeting, strangles trans-identifying babies to death on NHS maternity wards.

The Minister now has to decide whether to lay the revised Code of Practice in Parliament, under the so-called negative procedure for statutory instruments (secondary legislation), though – to the evident frustration of the EHRC – it seems she will not do so before the Labour Party deputy leadership contest is out of the way (voting closes on 23 October, and the result will be announced two days later). But, if and when she does lay the Code of Practice in Parliament, it will almost certainly come into force 40 sitting days later, despite an attempt by multiple trans organisations – supported by Liberal Democrat MPs – to force not just a Commons debate, but a free vote, and an apparent plot by trans activist peers to seek to derail the process in the House of Lords.

Thankfully, the numpty Fib Dem MPs and unelected trans activist peers can plot as much as they like, but they can’t thwart the law, as clarified by the Supreme Court on 16 April. The law is the law, and will remain the law even if Bridget Phillipson gets kidnapped by non-binary, asexual aliens and the revised EHRC Code – all 300 pages of it – vanishes up Lord Michael Cashman’s rear fanny, never to be seen again.

As previously documented on this blog, since 16 April four organisations have launched crowdfunded legal challenges to the Supreme Court ruling and/or the EHRC’s Interim Update of 25 April and/or the Code of Practice consultation. Liberty’s legal challenge was robustly dismissed by the High Court and then the Court of Appeal in June, but those launched by TransLucent, the Good Law Project (GLP) and Victoria McCloud/the Trans Legal Clinic are ongoing, in that they have not yet been abandoned or laughed out of court.

To date, the crowdfunders in support of these misconceived and wholly performative legal challenges have collectively leeched some £718,750 from the fearful, “besieged” and evidently misinformed ‘trans community’. And, were the five still open crowdfunders to reach their current targets, that sum would rise to almost £950,000.

However, back in the real world, the EHRC has concluded its consultation and has submitted the revised Code of Practice for approval by the Minister, without the consultation period being extended from six to 12 weeks (as demanded by Liberty and TransLucent), without the EHRC being declared in breach of its statutory duties (as demanded by the GLP), without the EHRC’s consultation process being declared unlawful (as demanded by the GLP), and without any court issuing a declaration of incompatibility with the European Convention on Human Rights (as demanded by the GLP and Victoria McCloud/Trans Legal Clinic).

Sure, on 15 October, six months after the Supreme Court ruling, the EHRC finally removed the Interim Update of 25 April from its website, as demanded by the GLP and TransLucent since late April. But not even the GLP or TransLucent have claimed this is a ‘win’ for them, as of course there was always a bit of a clue in the name and, in the words of the GLP, after six months “the damage has already been done”.

In short, as was both predictable and predicted, the £718,750 grifted from ‘the trans, non-binary and gender diverse’ community’ since 16 April has achieved … nothing. Zilch. Nada. Rien. Or, if you prefer, absolutely fuck all.

The origins and histories up to 31 August of these crowdfunded works of performance art are fully documented elsewhere on this blog. But, in summary, the current state of play in the cases against the EHRC and its Code of Practice consultation is as follows:

TransLucent, led by the vapid transwoman (i.e. biological man) Steph Richards, appear to have abandoned their threatened legal challenge to the EHRC Interim Update and consultation process. However, their woefully uninformative crowdfunder remains open, and to date has raised £11,000, though there have been no donations since 20 July. (A separate TransLucent crowdfunder, launched on 20 July in support of a “potential” intervention in crowdfunded legal action against the City of London Corporation by Sex Matters, has raised some £24,200 to date; in contrast, Sex Matters met their target of £65,000 some weeks ago.)

Good Law Project, led by the wealthy and newly bouffant yet biologically male Jolyon Maugham KC, had a tricky moment in the High Court on 30 July, when a clearly unimpressed judge ordered them to clarify exactly what it is they are seeking to challenge, and on what legal basis. A two-day rolled-up (permission and substantive) hearing is now scheduled for 12 and 13 November, and on 14 October the GLP published their amended claim, along with the EHRC’s detailed grounds of defence, which characterises the GLP’s amended claim as “misconceived” and invites the Court to “refuse permission or dismiss the claim, with costs”.

Meanwhile, the GLP’s two grossly misleading crowdfunders – one launched the day after the Supreme Court ruling, and the other just one week later – have grifted a combined total of almost £620,000. In recent months the initial flood of donations has dwindled to a trickle, but no doubt in early November the GLP will seek to exploit the upcoming High Court hearing to extract a bit more moolah from the midwits.

Somewhat hilariously, Maugham and the GLP are now facing a potentially costly defamation claim by barrister Sarah Phillimore, after they published and promoted on social media a defamatory news item about a (spurious) complaint they have made to the Bar Standards Board, against Ms Phillimore, on behalf of trans activist Sophie Molly/Euan Weddell. The foul-mouthed and attention-seeking Molly/Weddell – who appears to live in a polycule with at least two other mentally ill men – has since raised his profile by publicly celebrating the assassination in the USA of Charlie Kirk.

If not dismissed as ‘manifestly unfounded’, as some legal experts anticipate, the application to the European Court of Human Rights by the legal (wet) dream team of retired judge and transwoman (i.e. biological man) Victoria McCloud, the ‘non-binary’ but biologically male Instagram celebrity Mx Oscar ‘dying swan’ Davies of Garden Court Chambers, and the Trans Legal Clinic – led by recent law graduate and weirdly-endowed transwoman (i.e. biological man) Olivia Campbell-Cavendish – is unlikely to be determined by the Court for at least five years, according to McCloud. And even then there would be no obligation on the government of the day to act on any ruling in McCloud’s favour.

Despite these poor prospects, the Trans Legal Clinic’s grossly misleading crowdfunder in support of McCloud’s application has already raised more than £27,100 of its whopping target of £150,000 to “help cover legal costs, court fees, and the work needed to bring this historic case before the European Court of Human Rights”. Yet, at the time of writing, it is a mystery how the costs of the case might reach £27,100, let alone £150,000, given that there are no ‘court fees’ in the European Court of Human Rights, and Mx Oscar ‘dying swan’ Davies, at least, appears to be providing his legal services pro bono.

It may be that the crowdfunded largesse is to pay the ‘legal costs’ of the slightly less comical barristers Amanda Weston KC (Garden Court Chambers) and Jenn Lawrence (Monckton Chambers), and the boutique law firm W Legal, who stand in the wings, ready to do any actual legal work that might be required. On 9 September, and again on 25 September and 16 October, I contacted Ms Weston and Ms Lawrence to ask whether or not they, like Mx Davies, are providing their legal services pro bono, but to date they have not responded.

On 22 September, the Trans Legal Clinic was required to delete false claims that it operates “just like a law firm” and that its legal advice is “accredited by Advice UK”, of which it is a fee-paying member. However, it continues to falsely claim, in a ‘press pack’ about McCloud’s case on its website, that it is “the UK’s first law firm to specialise in the law as it intersects with gender identity”, while Olivia Campbell-Cavendish also includes this false claim in his LinkedIn profile. And many questions remain about whether – and if so how – the Trans Legal Clinic is fulfilling its charitable objectives.

On 21 September, I put some of these questions to Campbell-Cavendish, by email, but to date I’ve not had any response. And on 23 September I asked Advice UK to confirm that the Trans Legal Clinic holds Professional Indemnity Insurance – an eligibility requirement of Advice UK membership – and when this was verified by Advice UK. However, Advice UK are refusing to respond to my enquiry on the grounds that it is “vexatious”.

As reported elsewhere on this blog, on 2 October, the Trans Legal Clinic advertised paid modelling work related to “our upcoming campaigns, website and promotional materials”. And the reason for these paid modelling gigs seems to be an imminent but yet to be announced refresh of the Clinic, its website and Olivia Campbell-Cavendish’s wardrobe, funded by four recent grants totalling a stonking £695,000 from the Three Guineas Trust, one of the Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts.

In short, five self-obsessed biological men are busily blowing a pile of other people’s money on trying to undo the Supreme Court legal win by the three indefatigable women of For Women Scotland. This blog will document future developments in this ongoing mananadrama, and I will endeavour to update it (and the table above) at least weekly. But 5 September 2025 seems likely to be remembered as Doomsday for Victoria, Olivia, Jolyon, Oscar and Steph.

Needless to say, the five drama queens have been taking the above news like, well, drama queens. Asserting that the revised Code of Practice sent to the Minister – which, like the rest of us, they have not actually seen – “appears to offer little protection to anyone except transphobes”, Jolyon Maugham KC and his Good Law Project promptly took to social media to announce they “will challenge it in court”. Why wait to read something before announcing you are legally challenging it, eh? And, seemingly from his holiday chalet, Mx Oscar ‘dying swan’ Davies urged his many teenage fans to write to their MP to “demand a full debate and vote on the EHRC Code” that he, like the rest of us, hasn’t yet read.

On 14 October, the GLP and others got very, very excited about a letter sent to the trans activist Chairs of the Women & Equalities Committee of MPs and the Joint Committee on Human Rights, by the infamous trans activist Michael O’Flaherty, now the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights. With a massive bulge in his trousers, Maugham took to social media to feverishly hail the letter as “a very serious bollocking” of the Labour Government, and to frenziedly demand of the Prime Minister:

Are we going to be a nation that respects its human rights obligations, or are we going to abandon them whenever the rightwing press demands it? First immigrants, then trans people – who next, Sir Keir?

However, O’Flaherty’s numpty letter was promptly dismissed by both home secretary Shabana Mahmood and shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick, and then forensically demolished by Michael Foran, associate professor of law at Oxford University. But hey, we now have this image, for use when the High Court rules on the GLP’s legal challenge: