Thread by @CliveWismayer

Whoever is masterminding the govts’ litigation strategy in the GLP’s latest challenge is a bit of a moron. They decided as a semi-legitimate tactic to budget for £2,000,000 in legal fees to defend the claim. If this were some tedious commercial dispute between a wealthy ..

.. company & a weak one, this wouldn’t be a bad idea. I’ve seen it. The idea is simply to deter the other party from continuing by maximising their risk exposure.

The strategy here is stupid because:

• the money being played with is OUR money & we weren’t asked if ..

.. we minded.
• it depended on @GoodLawProject being deterred & misjudged their courage
• the sum was too ridiculously inflated (£500,000 would have been a more defensible number)
• the court’s, admittedly little used, power to cap costs was not taken into account.

..

.. The tactical incompetence was in evidence today. I think Jo Maugham said yesterday the govt. was planning to show up with something like 8 solicitors & 4 barristers (1 barrister alone would be fine).

The foolish idea was to convey to the judge by sheer numbers the extreme ..

.. complexity of the proceedings whereas, High Court judges being mostly very smart cookies indeed, s/he is likely only to have wondered why the govt. was represented in court by 12 people mostly doing nothing.

So this idiot ..

.. whoever it is, & I hope s/he gets to read this, achieved only a humiliating & embarrassing reverse today which will hobble the govt. in the further course of the case.

Thing is, this is a bit of a scandal too, one which the press might take the trouble to notice & ..

.. understand. What the govt. was trying to do was reprehensible & improper. Stupid too, of course, but scandalous.