James Harding is the former editor of The Times, who has raised a reported £20 million for his Tortoise Media “slow news” website. It is just like all the other centrist/ soft-left / remainer websites, so in an effort to distinguish itself from Prospect, The New Statesman, New European and Byline Times etc, he has today decided to try a move out of the Jolyon Maugham lawfare playbook. Harding is threatening to initiate a Judicial Review against the Conservative Party’s for their refusal to answer questions about its membership. This, according to Guido sources, is less of a refusal and, rather, plain indifference. A Tory source tells Guido “Pretty soon Harding will be donning a kimono. Any foxes in his vicinity should be on high alert”…

The pomposity of Harding is manifest, even so, this is ridiculously lacking in self-awareness. So ridiculous that even Jolyon Maugham, a man who triggers Judical Reviews as often as Guido has hangovers, has condemned it as futile and misguided:

If media organisations are now to be able to threaten private organisations with Judicial Reviews, Guido thought he should write to James at Tortoise Media and ask them where they get the millions they are wasting:

What a waste of time and effort…