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The Good Law Project

Another update, this one focusing on the Conservative Party selling peerages and attempting to cover their traces. Everything is for sale with Tories, this time it is our political system. It would be hard to find an example of more blatant corruption, but given pretty much everything they do is corrupt it comes as zero surprise. Crooked to their very core.

“A peculiar trend has been spotted in the House of Lords. Have you noticed it? It looks a bit like high-value donors to the Tory party are being ‘awarded’ a peerage as thanks for a massive wad of cash. Dodgy stuff.

There’s no denying the numbers. Earlier this month, The Sunday Times and openDemocracy revealed that 15 of the last 16 Conservative Party treasurers have been offered a seat in the House of Lords, having each donated more than £3 million to the party.

Many other Conservative donors have also been ennobled alongside party treasurers. In total 22 of the party’s main financial backers have been given peerages since 2010. Together, they have given an estimated £54 million to the party.

A former Tory Party chairman reportedly told The Sunday Times, “Once you pay your £3 million, you get your peerage.” And one former Conservative cabinet minister this month described it as a “scandal in plain sight”.

The Scottish National Party’s Pete Wishart MP wrote to the Metropolitan Police to report this pattern and ask them to investigate. But mere days later, the Met wrote back to Mr Wishart refusing to investigate, saying “there is insufficient information upon which to launch a criminal investigation”.

This is rather baffling. Buying or selling honours is a crime which the police have, in the past, been willing to investigate. In March 2006, Scottish National Party MP Angus McNeil brought a complaint to the police after it emerged that four wealthy businessmen, who had lent the Labour Party a total of £5 million, were nominated by Tony Blair for peerages. The police questioned a raft of politicians over the scandal and made several arrests.

We think it looks suspiciously like the Conservatives are selling off seats in the heart of our democracy. Members of the House of Lords get a say on laws that affect all of our lives. Why should someone get a vote on Universal Credit because they handed 3 million quid to the Conservative Party?

When asked about this yesterday, the Prime Minister defended his party’s reliance on major donors, saying, “Until you get rid of the system by which the trade union barons fund other parties…we have to go ahead.”

If the Government is selling peerages, it’s breaking the law. We think there is more than enough evidence to trigger a police investigation. If the Metropolitan Police refuse to investigate, they must satisfactorily explain why or risk judicial review.

Alongside Pete Wishart MP, we areasking the Met to share the information and documents they considered before refusing to investigate, and the internal record of the refusal.

At the heart of this legal action is a simple ask: that Boris Johnson be subject to the same law as you and I. And if there's reason to think he has broken it he gets investigated by the police, just like you and I would.

Thank you,

Jo Maugham - Good Law Project

Good Law Project only exists thanks to donations from ordinary people across the UK. If you’re in a position to support our work, you can do so here:

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I'd like to like your post but in spite of donations and almost daily examples of our leaders crookedness our situation seems to get worse daily. Enlightened folk hereabouts with access to all this information still support cunservative politics, seek to excuse the inexcusable and look for succour from those already proven to be almost as bad. I'm glad I'm nearer the stone than the forceps.
 
New action against dictatorship-style machinations:

It’s not much fun being a Conservative backbench MP at the moment. No 10 is reportedly threatening them with the withdrawal of funding for their constituencies if they don’t toe the party line in Commons votes.

No 10 reportedly made these threats to force MPs to spare Tory MP Owen Paterson from suspension, after he broke parliamentary rules by lobbying for a private firm that paid him £100,000 a year. One backbencher said MPs were told “they would lose funding for their constituency” if they failed to vote with the Prime Minister.

Not only does this undermine Parliament and weaken MPs’ independence, if the allegations are true, this is in the realms of criminal offence.

Threatening to cut off funding for local communities to save the skin of a disgraced MP also reveals the truth behind what the Government likes to style as ‘levelling up’.

Good Law Project has sent a pre-action protocol letter to Michael Gove inviting him to deny, if he can, that the alleged conduct happened, to turn over any documents evidencing it - and to stop the threats. If you’re able to, you can make a donation to fund the legal challenge here:

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The reports suggest a very serious misuse of public money, in the realms of criminal conduct, by or for the Prime Minister. We will not stand by and watch.


Thank you,

Jo Maugham

Read our pre-action protocol letter to Rt Hon Michael Gove MP, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
 
My mother is not someone who is usually aggravated by political shenanigans (apart from her consideration that all tories are @#*ts) but I’ve been highlighting what’s been going on and she’s now signed up to give a few £ a month, and she’s going to speak to her weekly coffee buddies as well, hopefully next election cycle we can kick the tories out of Galloway.
 
Government has hit us with a shock legal bill in our challenge with Runnymede over their appointment of Conservative Peer Dido Harding and her ex-colleague Mike Coupe to run the disastrous Test and Trace programme - without open competition.

Legal action is expensive, so we don’t take it lightly. That’s why, back in March, we asked for Government’s costs estimate for defending this case. We said plainly and clearly that we were asking so we knew whether to apply for a costs cap (a Court order that would have ‘capped’ how much we’d have to pay Government if we don’t win). Government replied with reassurance that their costs ‘would be in the region of £35,000 to £50,000’ and, in reliance on that, we did not seek a costs cap.

A couple of months later, they wrote to say their expected costs would actually be closer to £150,000. While this was an alarming three times more than their initial estimate, it felt just about manageable so we pressed on.

But now, out of nowhere and with only weeks until our High Court hearing, they have increased their estimated costs again - to a whopping £360,000 - with a barely credible explanation. By way of comparison, our lawyers’ bill is estimated at £70,000 if we lose, and £175,000 if we win.

Government’s approach feels very much like a ‘bait and switch’. It’s now too late for us to apply for a costs cap, and we’re facing an enormous potential bill if we do not win in Court - seven times higher than Government’s original estimate. This means we’re still more than £200,000 off the sum needed to cover our adverse costs risk in this case. But we aren’t prepared to down tools. Will you help us carry the load?

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This Government’s approach to public appointments discriminates against those who aren’t born with a silver spoon in their mouths. The principle at stake - that Government must appoint the best candidate, not its best friend - is incredibly important. If we don’t defend this, we don’t see who else can.

The hearing is due to take place in the High Court on 14 and 15 December.

Thank you for your support.

Jo Maugham
 
Agreed. GLP made a serious mistake here in trusting a fundamentally untrustworthy government. Hopefully a lesson learned. As ever, never trust a Tory to keep their word.
 
Agreed. GLP made a serious mistake here in trusting a fundamentally untrustworthy government. Hopefully a lesson learned. As ever, never trust a Tory to keep their word.

That was my thought as well - how did they not think it better to apply for the cost cap in the first place, knowing that the government would be perfectly happy to pull a trick like this?

I suppose they live & learn like the rest of us.
 
Hopefully they win the case, if not I’m sure they’ll be able to crowd-fund that amount easy enough. There are a lot of us out here prepared to stick our hands in our pockets to fight the UK’s decline into a corrupt failed state.
 
Hopefully that Spider Woman who heard Johnsons attempt to prorogue Parliament will be in attendance at the hearing !

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Yup, you're looking at one here. This corruption should be plastered all over the front pages of our newspapers, instead it has to be highlighted by organisations such as the Good Law project.
 
Happy to contribute to Jo Maugham's hunting fund, ahem. My concern is that folks like us contribute to sue the crooks then pay for the defence via taxation. The crookedness already exposed should've been enough to sink any govt, the fact that it hasn't shows we have a democracy in name only. It gives the "warm and fuzzy feelings" to see these bastards found out but it's at no cost to them. They just carry on as if nothing had happened, after all, even if they had to pay costs out of the bungs they get for giving £37bn away it'll be small beer. The scant coverage these victories get in the press has no effect, we need some of the organ grinders to do serious time for fraud or treason. I won't hold my breath.
 
The crookedness already exposed should've been enough to sink any govt, the fact that it hasn't shows we have a democracy in name only. It gives the "warm and fuzzy feelings" to see these bastards found out but it's at no cost to them.

I view it as a gradual move towards a tipping-point. We need to keep applying whatever pressure is possible via Good Law Project, StopFundingHate, Led By Donkeys etc etc until either the government position is untenable and they collapse or people have had enough and take to the streets. We need to keep the brightest spotlight we can possibly afford on these crooks.
 
Latest update reveals Hancock trying sleight of hand in Parliament yesterday by denying unequivocally that a £40million contract went to his pub landlord. Spot on - the good law project have found that the contract was with someone else, who immediately subcontracted it to his pub landlord…..

The subcontractor is redacted in the published contract but not in the version that was sent anonymously to the good law project.
 
This is a genuine question, and not a troll ....

What is the purpose of the GLP ? Is it to win legal cases against the government that forces the government to change its behavior, or constrains the excesses (somewhat like the ACLU)? Has it achieved any notable victories (yet) ?
Or is it to try to force the media to provide coverage of the appalling behavior of the conservative government ?

After the fox killing incident I'm concerned that the GLP could simply be providing a good living to Jo Maugham while not actually achieving anything.
 


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