Jolyon Maugham has quietly shuffled the ownership of his crowd-funded litigation-losing vehicle the Good Law Project into a Jersey purpose trust. Jersey…
Good Law Project insists it will remain UK resident for tax purposes and there will be no change to how its income is taxed. Nothing to see here…
But what is actually going on? The stated reason for the offshore move is to replicate the characteristics of charity status without being bound by the “moving political guardrails policed by the Charity Commission.“ Maugham wants all the credibility of being a charity, with none of the oversight. The Charity Commission getting in the way of your political activism? Pop offshore and set up a purpose trust instead…
And who controls this Jersey vehicle? In the short term, the only trustee will be a company owned by Jolyon himself, and he will remain the “person with significant control.“ So after all the fanfare about handing over ownership, Jolyon is still, in every meaningful sense, in charge…
The next time Maugham appears on the Today programme to demand that some government contractor be hauled over the coals for its corporate structure, perhaps the interviewer could ask him a simple question. Why Jersey, Jolyon?
While Starmer’s premiership is imploding Jolyon Maugham is busy having a protracted argument over whether he was friends with writer JK Rowling. Your average day on Planet Jolyon…
Maugham took issue with Kezia Dugdale – former Scottish Labour leader and new chairman of LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall – praising Rowling and said on woke playground Bluesky: “I speak to a lot of people about JK Rowling – many once close friends with her. I was once friends with her. And they all say she is now very changed.” On X Rowling said she had never met him and called Jolyon “a fixated loon”…
Jolyon is now raging on Bluesky about Rowling’s “band of trolls” and says he has “direct messages from her signed off with a kiss which is, I’d say, a decent marker of friendship.” So followed one message from 2017 about Katie Hopkins…
Does anyone want to check on Jolyon? Dibs not…
Jolyon’s Bluesky followers have been treated to a short video of the failed lawyer dancing backstage at a trans festival in London. This is what you’ve lost over on Musk’s X…
Jolyon is seen enthusiastically dancing at the Trans Mission festival in Wembley with American singer Beth Ditto. Zack Polanski was at the same event and gave a speech in which he said “trans rights are human rights” and asked “are you ready for hope to be normal again?” Such a shame to have missed it…
He’s back.
Jolyon has quietly reactivated his X account just over a month after announcing his dramatic departure. He promises in the resurrected account bio that the page is “no longer active and not monitored“. Except he’s already followed someone (Mike Burry) in the last 24 hours, so that’s not entirely true…
To be fair to the foxbeater, at least he held out longer than Jon Sopel – who only managed 24 hours off Musk’s platform. Sooner or later, they always return…
More than 30 barristers and academics have signed a public letter to equalities minister Bridget Phillipson accusing Jolyon’s Good Law Project (GLP) of making “egregiously false” claims about their High Court defeat on single-sex spaces. In a blistering attack, Jolyon’s learned friends say the GLP is repeatedly “selling hope” to its gullible supporters over trans rights, aggressively fundraising for court fights it inevitably loses. Don’t say Guido didn’t warn you…
The letter makes specific reference to Jolyon’s defeat in the High Court last week, which the GLP subsequently misrepresented by claiming “the High Court makes clear that service providers are not obliged to exclude trans people from gendered spaces and services”. The lawyers shot this down in no uncertain terms…
“Nowhere in his judgment did Swift J conclude that ‘service providers are not obliged to exclude trans people from gendered spaces and services’. The phrase ‘gendered spaces’ is absent from the judgment and has no legal meaning… We are aware of no other organisation that has ever published such egregiously false material about the judgment in a case that it has lost.”
Brutal. Guido has said for years that Jolyon tries to use the courts as a political vehicle. If he wants to stand for Parliament, he should. He’s familiar with how it feels to lose by now anyway. Even some of his former supporters have had enough: “Maugham always pretends he’s had some sort of win even when he has unambiguously and comprehensively lost. He did the same with his Brexit cases. I’m fed up of this turd polisher claiming he does so much for us.” From learned friend to ‘turd polisher’ – life comes at you fast…
The Good Law Project’s challenge to the EHRC’s interim trans guidance has been dismissed in the High Court today. Another notch on Jolyon’s belt…
Maugham described the ruling as a “pretty grim decision.” The case has been dismissed thanks to the fact that the interim guidance doesn’t exist any more, and that the GLP isn’t a valid claimant anyway, among other things. Oh dear….
UPDATE: Jolyon is already handing out the begging bowl for his appeal of the ruling.
Paula Barker, Liverpool Wavertree MP backing Andy Burnham, told Times Radio there wouldn’t be trouble from the markets under Burnham:
“The markets will have to fall in line.”
