Soon enough, Jolyon will have lost more cases than he’s started. A week and a half ago, the Good Law Project announced they were challenging the Charity Commission over the Institute of Economic Affairs’ charity status due to its so-called “political campaigning and unbalanced educational research“. As Guido predicted, it’s fallen at the first hurdle…
The Charity Commission has rejected the Good Law Project’s demand to open a formal inquiry into the free market think tank, stating: “We have assessed the concerns raised and have not identified concerns that the charity is acting outside of its objects or the Commission’s published guidance.” That’s not before his gullible donors coughed up £76,000 for the doomed cause…
The IEA’s spokesperson says:
“The IEA welcomes the Charity Commission’s rapid rejection of the Good Law Project’s vexatious complaint. This publicity stunt has backfired by reconfirming the IEA is acting consistently with our status as an educational charity. ”
This has to be a loss in record-breaking time for the fox beater…
Jolyon has picked a new target to ask his donors for cash. This time Ofcom is in his razor-sharp legal claws for “unlawfully” failing to hold GB News to the same standard as other broadcasters. Jolyon is deploying his usual strategy of claiming to his donors that “legal proceedings” are underway when his outfit has actually just sent one pre-action letter. Pre-action letters are explicitly intended to try to settle a dispute without legal proceedings. As Jolyon has discovered, you don’t actually have to do anything to rake in the cash…
The Good Law Project’s legal claim rests on the fact that Ofcom chief Melanie Dawes said in an interview once that “the standard” for a channel like the BBC is higher than one like GB News and that it’s “not about the overall output of a channel, as long as for each programme there is a sufficient range of views brought to bear.” Which has always been Ofcom’s policy…
As the GLP’s own letter sets out, Ofcom is clear that:
“‘Due impartiality”’does not mean an equal division of time has to be given to every view, or that every argument and every facet of every argument has to be represented.”
Ofcom in cahoots with GB News? The 21 spats they’ve had in the last two years must all be for show…
Another case of Jolyon’s is off to a great start. The Good Law Project yesterday published Palantir lawyers Schillings’ response last month to their pre-action letter alleging that the software company issued “false and defamatory” statements about Jolyon’s outfit. Jolyon has already managed to fleece £67,023 from his donors for the non-starter…
Schillings’ response sets out:
The Good Law Project and other left-wing campaigners have taken issue with Palantir for years because they think private medical records will be freely accessed by a company owned by a libertarian. In actuality all that will happen is that anonymised medical records held by hospitals and care providers will be allowed to be shared with each other on a large-scale “federated” platform, thereby facilitating lower waiting lists and faster life-saving care. Meanwhile, the Good Law Project’s campaign to get people to “opt-out” is actually encouraging them to stop giving the NHS itself any information – D’oh!
Read Schillings’ full response below:
The Good Law Project has a found a fresh new target to swing at. They announced last night that they’re going to challenge the Charity Commission over the Institute of Economic Affairs’ charity status due to its so-called “political campaigning and unbalanced educational research“. Maugham has “teamed up” with a small handful of usual suspect leftie MPs including Clive Lewis and Layla Moran to bring this next losing case. Not very charitable of them…
The case was formed off a complaint (made by themselves, of course) and it looks like Maugham’s latest crusade appears to be attacking free-market think-tanks and their charitable status based on whether they are too political or not. It seems he never runs out of bad ideas. Think-tanks, indeed as the Chairman of the Charity Commission said himself, “make an enormously positive contribution to intellectual debate” and just because they engage in political activities shouldn’t mean they have their charitable status called into question. A spokesperson for the Institute of Economic Affairs hits back at the tireless fox beater:
“This complaint is a vexatious publicity stunt. It contains nothing new and little of substance. The Charity Commission has been clear that approaching economic and political science from a free market perspective is legitimate and consistent with our status as an educational charity. The IEA will not be deterred from its mission to advance the public understanding of economics by political activists with an axe to grind.”
Guido doesn’t think the IEA have to worry. If Jolyon’s track record is anything to go by, the case will be in the ditch by summer…
The Good Law Project is up to its old losing tricks again. To kick off their campaign against voter ID, Jolyon’s crew have sent a pre-action letter to the government on behalf of a “trans woman with disabilities, who has no photographic identification” and who believes that voter ID requirements “undermine” “the ability to vote in a free and fair election“. Jolyon might not have much joy trying to challenge a statute by judicial review…
The Government Legal Department’s letter in response is pretty amusing. It sets out that the Good Law Project says it “will bring litigation” against the government and has raised nearly £60,000 from crowdfunders to do so despite sending a pre-action letter “in hopes of avoiding the need for litigation“. Avoiding litigation is the whole point of pre-action letters…
Government lawyers then point out that there is no mention in the “particularly detailed pre-action letter” of the free-to-claim voter authority certificate (VAC) that counts as ID for any election. On top of that they note there also isn’t any reference to the VAC anywhere on the Good Law Project’s website, all while “misinformation, such as that the forms of identification are ‘targeted at the older generation’ serves to undermine the important work that is ongoing“. They go on to attach the simple-to-fill out application form for it. Lawyers who dub Jolyon’s outfit the “Good Laugh Project” are finding his latest antics highly entertaining…
Now that 2023 is over fresh eyes can review fox-beater Jolyon Maugham’s legal crusades from last year. As it turns out, his Good Law Project didn’t win a single case. Out of 12 crowdfunded cases opened in 2023 none have been resolved successfully for the posturing lawyers. Jolyon’s last actual win was over a planning dispute in Shrewsbury in May 2022…
Jolyon collected £623,895 from his hapless fans last year for his pains. While he complains about a supposed conspiracy to pay social media influencers to attack his work, the GLP’s latest project to privately prosecute over misuse of funds during the pandemic has been abandoned. If anyone can spin an uninterrupted string of defeats as a victory, it’s Jolyon…
