Left-wing Good Law Project and Stop Funding Hate have been tireless in their censorship campaign against GB News. The Good Law Project rallied its supporters to fill out complaint forms against GB News to send to Ofcom while, conveniently harvesting their data for potential use “to further develop the campaign.” They then did the same again “to stop Sky funding hate speech” by facilitating ads on GB. Meanwhile, Stop Funding Hate is still handing round the begging bowl, urging donors to “help build the fightback against GB News.” A quick look at the books sheds some light on why they’re rattling the tin…
Latest accounts show Jolyon Maugham’s Good Law Project clawed back just £467 in legal costs last year, as its fortunes nosedive under Labour. Once rolling in crowdfunded cash – raking in £1.86 million in 2022 – it scraped together a mere £83,523 through five crowdfunders since July. They closed its vanity law firm, burning through £439,100 on the way down. Stop Funding Hate isn’t faring much better, limping along with a £28,005 net income loss and scrambling to cover its £92,683 campaigning bill via another crowdfunder. Baroness Claire Fox said:
“These revelations show that it’s craven intolerance of media freedom and viewpoint diversity that animates these campaign groups. That these attacks on regulated media outlets are also used by activists to raise cash to fund their continued assaults on free speech, is especially grubby.”
Eyebrows raised over whether targeting the ‘People’s Channel’ is just a handy cash grab as the coffers run dry…
Last month, the Good Law Project were back whinging about centrist and right-leaning think tanks’ funding. This time, Britain’s favourite night-time noise investigator and his cronies claimed that charities were functioning as “shadowy groups that twist public debate” – funding think tanks the Good Law Project happens to disagree with. Classic fare from the midnight beater…
Fortunately, Guido is on hand to audit Good Law Project’s own public records. Between 2018 and 2021, The Good Law Project received a cool £60,850 from the ever-political Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust. The Trust, who fund the Morgan McSweeney’s pet project Labour Together and the Labour-affiliated Fabian Society, have also made donations to the Labour Campaign for Human Rights, Labour Coast & Country, Labour for a People’s Vote, Labour for a New Democracy, Remain Labour, and Labour MP Jim McMahon. If it walks like politics and quacks like politics…
The Trust has even forked out to cabinet minister Darren Jones “for staff and associated project costs to influence the next Labour Party manifesto”. The Good Law Project also complained of charity funders “undermining the public sector.” So Jolyon and Co will surely be surprised to learn that their own funders at the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust have given cash to Migrants Organise, a charity that has advocated for obstruction of Home Office immigration raids and the Muslim Council of Britain, an organisation so controversial even the Labour Government won’t (officially) engage with them. The naff law project strikes again…
Jolyon’s Good Law Project is advertising for a new full-time position – an “EU Campaigns Lead” whose job description is pretty simple:
“The post-holder will develop the first stage of our work to create a campaign for Labour to commit to a referendum on rejoining the EU in its 2029 manifesto.”
For £60,000 a year Jolyon’s outfit is looking for someone who knows the “implications of Brexit” and has an “understanding of the opportunities and capabilities afforded by technology as a campaign tool.” That’s all in aid of the Good Law Project’s new goal – to stand candidates in a general election:
“You will recruit – and support – volunteer constituency organisers to build those lists. In constituencies where we are able to build high levels of support we may in 2029 stand candidates against sitting MPs who will not commit to a referendum.”
News that the GLP is turning into a political party will no doubt make a grand total of zero alarm bells ring in established parties’ headquarters. Now that Jolyon has mobilised the Good Law Project machine in favour of a new referendum co-conspirators can rest assured that campaign is well and truly dead. You don’t need a referendum to rejoin anyway – as Labour is striving to prove…
Jolyon’s latest bizarre campaign is to support action against the Charity Commission (his new favourite enemy), which has refused to retract the conclusions of its report into the old disgraced charity Kids Company. The Good Law Project says it is supporting a Judicial Review into the collapse of the scandal-hit charity “to fully restore its reputation.” This is despite its CEO, Camila Batmanghelidjh, having died a year ago…
Over 19 years Kids Company – once a favourite of King Charles – attracted £115 million in donations from Richard Branson, Coldplay, JK Rowling, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley and others. It also hoovered up £40 million of taxpayers’ cash before collapsing in the summer of 2015…
Sceptical questions about the charity were first asked in investigative journalist Miles Goslett’s groundbreaking investigation for the Spectator. He also told of how BBC boss and Kids Company trustee Alan Yentob secretly lobbied Treasury officials over an unpaid £689,000 employment tax bill which the charity had clocked up. In the end, £589,000 of the debt was secretly written off – at the taxpayer’s expense…
Goslett also revealed Batmanghelidjh had a chauffeur and a personal private swimming pool in a £5,000-a-month mansion – paid for from charity funds. BuzzFeed/BBC reporters Alan White and Chris Cook looked into the charity too, reporting the alleged sexual abuse of its clients. In a 2022 judgment that baffled many the High Court found that allegations of Kids Company’s financial mismanagement were unfounded. The Good Law Project is supporting a hare-brained effort to force the Charity Commission to “abandon its criticisms of Kids Company’s trustees” in a report which found it repeatedly failed to pay tax and its workers. It may go the way of some of his other noble efforts…
While Siddiq was being ejected from government late yesterday another Labour MP landed himself in hot water. The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards published his report into Clive Lewis’ involvement with Jolyon’s Good Law Project. In a 52-page report he concludes Lewis broke clear parliamentary rules…
Last year the Good Law Project teamed up with MPs Lewis, Layla Moran, and Caroline Lucas to try to bring legal action against the Charity Commission for its handling of their previous campaigns against the Global Warming Policy Foundation and Institute of Economic Affairs. Another hare-brained scheme for which the GLP solicited donations from its supporters…
The problem is that only Moran registered, as per the Category 8 rules, the “funds established to defray legal costs arising out of the Member’s work, including ‘crowdfunded’ legal funds for action to which the Member is a party.” Lewis claims he was not aware that the GLP would fund the litigation along with an array of other excuses, including that he was ignored in communications from Jolyon’s outfit. The commissioner concludes “that there has been a breach of Rule 5 as the Crowdfunder detailed above should have been registered in the Register of Member’s Financial Interests.” Lewis gets a slap on the wrist…
As per procedure Lewis has had to send an email back apologising. The whole exchange of letters makes for entertaining reading. Even the most progressive MPs might think twice before signing themselves onto Jolyon’s next mad project after this…
Jolyon Maugham’s Good Law Project is busy promoting its tired and failed campaign against Rishi Sunak over a minor GDPR breach from before the election to raise cash. Struggling to take the actual government to task?
Rinsing Jolyon’s credulous backers for more cash on old campaigns may have something to do with the GLP’s struggling finances. The latest annual accounts show it made a loss of nearly £80,000, compared to a surplus of over £2.6 million in 2022. Regular and one-off general donations have fallen by about £400,000 in the year to January 2024. Legal costs brought in also amounted to a hilarious £467…
The GLP has been doing a lot of soul-searching and has this week been distractedly posting about Donald Trump with the usual hysterical material. Jolyon’s targets are running out…
Speaking at his speech on how to achieve “progressive capitalism” Wes Streeting fired a dig and Andy Burnham:
“Bond markets are not bond villains and fiscal rules matter.”