The email from the Good Law Project to its supporters was unequivocal. ‘Breaking: We Won,’ it exclaimed. A few moments later the organisation’s director, barrister Jolyon Maugham, took to Twitter. ‘BREAKING: Prime Minister Boris Johnson and former Health Minister Matt Hancock broke the law because they didn’t think about disabled and ethnic minority communities in appointing Dido Harding and Mike Coupe,’ he gleefully revealed.
Yet, as Maugham basked in his moment of glory and his army of progressive supporters fanned across to social media to celebrate, it began to emerge there was just one small problem. What the Good Law Project had said wasn’t true.
As Maugham basked in his moment of glory and his army of progressive supporters fanned across to social media to celebrate, it began to emerge there was just one small problem. What the Good Law Project had said wasn’t true
The judgment into a case brought against appointing Harding the chairman, and Coupe a director, of the Covid Test and Trace Task Force didn’t mince its words. ‘The claim brought by Good Law Project fails in its entirety,’ Lord Justice Singh and Mr Justice Swift ruled. They found part of a claim brought by the Runnymede Trust succeeded only on the basis the appointments implemented at the height of the coronavirus crisis ‘were made without compliance with the public sector equality duty’.
But the most explosive argument – that Harding and Coupe had been selected because Ministers considered ‘only candidates with some relevant personal or political connection’ – was unequivocally rejected.
‘It fails on its facts,’ Singh and Swift stated, while pointedly adding: ‘Mr Maugham asserts that Mr Coupe is a “friend” of Baroness Harding but provides no further detail’.
The judges also addressed the claim that Boris Johnson was guilty of breaking the law. ‘No remedy should be granted as against the first Defendant, the Prime Minister, since it is clear on the facts as found by this Court that he played no part in the two appointments,’ they said.
Jolyon Maugham is best known for his bold announcement on Boxing Day 2019 that he had just bludgeoned a fox to death with a baseball bat while dressed in a satin kimono. But it’s time to address the manner in which he’s leading a similar assault on the British Government, the British legal system and British democracy.
In Maugham’s eyes – and those of his devoted followers – he’s a judicial caped crusader. ‘I really, really don’t like acts of dishonesty by the State,’ he says. ‘I don’t like the Government misleading the public.’ But, as we saw last week, this passion for honesty and transparency in the public sphere doesn’t extend to pronouncements on the cases brought by his own organisation.
And there are a lot of cases. Overturning Brexit. Promoting trans rights. The right of schools to enforce face masks. Partygate. Net Zero. Windrush compensation. The Good Law Project has engaged in litigation on them all.
‘Good Law Project is a not-for-profit campaign organisation that uses the law to protect the interests of the public’ is the portentous claim on the organisation’s website. But it doesn’t. What Good Law actually do is engage in guerrilla warfare via the courts to destabilise the elected government of the day, and promote their own partial, liberal agenda.
Justice is supposedly blind. But all of Good Law’s cases emanate from one narrow part of the political spectrum. And are prosecuted for a single, and transparent, political purpose
To be fair, their MO is brilliantly simple. They select a high-profile issue. They announce they are going to mount a legal challenge over it and appeal for funds to finance their action. Their middle-class supporters dip into their pockets and Good Law duly roll up to court, where they file a number of claims, some on major points of law and governance, others that represent legal technicalities. They then mostly lose, at which point, as we have seen in this case, they claim victory anyway. Or they occasionally win – almost always on a relatively
