(With apologies to Supertramp)

This morning, the Good Law Project launched their 100th lawfare-related crowdfunder since tax lawyer turned turd polisher Jolyon Maugham KC founded the GLP in March 2017. So now seems a good time to update 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 to bring down the Goliaths known as Brexit, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. 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, Whereas 26 (60%) of the 44 crowdfunders they launched between 1 January 2021 and 4 July 2024 raised more than £40,000, and 17 (40%) raised more than £60,000.

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 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 raised a colossal £761,781, somewhat more than twice the GLP’s total income from crowdfunding in their financial year 2024-25 (£322,000). Well, if you don’t support trans, you are a monster. Or something.

However, the Supreme Court’s ruling 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 tthe 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, 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 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 in my ToFF. Maugham and the GLP may have crowdfunded a total of more than £3.5 million 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 one of law firm Bindmans’ defamation cases, in 2023;
• a £25K settlement with a US law firm, in a trivial transgenderism case, in 2025; and
• an apparent 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, the GLP is enabling Michaela Hall to sue the Police; is helping student activist Stella Maris sue her university; is enabling right-wing commentator Albie Amonkona to bring an Employment Tribunal claim against his right-wing former employer GB News, and an unidentified individual to bring an Employment Tribunal claim against the Daily Mail; and is helping middle-class granny Gaie Delap sue the Ministry of Justice for making her serve a few weeks more of her 20-month prison sentence.

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 often 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, and baseball bats. Whatever, we must surely welcome the rise of the wealthy activist tax lawyer.