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Jo Maugham

7 Jan, 5 tweets, 1 min read

Before we get too superior, our Prime Minister (chosen by fewer than 160,000 members of the Conservative Party) suspended the elected legislature when it became inconvenient to him.

He was stopped by our constitution but his Government is - at this very moment - considering whether to change our constitution so he can't be stopped should he want to do it again.

Our media - including in particular, the BBC - scrambled to justify his actions. And if you were paying attention you learned a shocking lesson: that there was meaningfully nothing a Government in the UK could do which our media would not defend.

The things Johnson's Government has done wrong - the corruption, the kneejerk dishonesty, the suspension of democracy - we would in clear words condemn in any other country. But we are complacent and assume that, because our Government does it, it cannot be wrong.

This is a serious problem. A population or media that cannot imagine being betrayed by its Government will permit that Government to do anything. How serious must a betrayal be - we know suspending Parliament was not enough - before the population or media says clearly "enough"?

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More from @JolyonMaugham

Jo Maugham

@JolyonMaugham

9 Jan

Has anyone worked out if it's a good thing that private capital gets to decide whether a democratically elected politician can speak directly to the people?

(Not an attack on Facebook or Twitter; not a defence of Trump. Just a genuine question, about governance and power.)

I don't know the answer, which is why I asked. My instinct is that the question should never arise. And it only arose here because the other governance and legal checks, checks within the power of the State, failed first.

Read 5 tweets

Jo Maugham

@JolyonMaugham

4 Jan

Some noise on my timeline about Keira Bell raising further funds to resist the anticipated appeal of the Tavistock to the Court of Appeal. I can't see anything ethically wrong with her conduct vis-a-vis crowdfunding.

It often happens when you succeed in a case for which you have obtained a costs-capping order that the costs you recover from the other side don't cover your liability to your own legal team.

Indeed, depending on the terms on which your legal team have acted, your liability to them might exceed the total of what you recovered from the other side plus what you crowdfunded. So you have to find more money even though you won.

Read 5 tweets

Jo Maugham

@JolyonMaugham

3 Jan

Schools 'reopening' - or not - could be quite a big moment for the country. We may be about to test the limits of what a widely distrusted and incompetent Government can achieve by command.

If parents refuse to send children to schools; if headteachers refuse to reopen schools; if teaching unions advise teachers not to turn up; if local authorities advise schools to close and fail to impose fines on parents; what then?

In a State with no meaningful checks on executive power - no higher law, no meaningful second house, a first house collapsing into the executive, a monopolistic state broadcaster... in a State like ours, how does the notion of the consent of the governed express itself?

Read 4 tweets

Jo Maugham

@JolyonMaugham

2 Jan

So, just before Christmas, Government what it called a "response" to this New York Times account of cronyism in pandemic spending. nytimes.com/interactive/20…

And I said, when that "response" - which you can read here gov.uk/government/new… - was published that every single notional rebuttal by Government of a claim made by the New York Times was false, misleading or both.

And it's time for me to make good.

Here's the first "rebuttal" by Government to the New York Times' claim that: "The government handed out thousands of contracts to fight the virus, some of them in a secretive V.I.P. lane."

Read 23 tweets

Jo Maugham

@JolyonMaugham

29 Dec 20

When, oh when, will I learn to read the key to chocolate assortments?

Coffee, then marzipan, and it feels like Gods are punishing me for the sins of several past lives.

https://twitter.com/scook2003/status/1343903447737888769

The mirror/signal/manoeuvre of middle age.

https://twitter.com/scook2003/status/1343903447737888769

Read 4 tweets

Jo Maugham

@JolyonMaugham

26 Dec 20

A rebalancing clause, a review clause, an ECHR kill switch... will investors, having regard to our volatile politics and disregard for the rule of law, want to bet on the trade deal remaining in place?