Awful to watch those brave people getting arrested in Russia for protesting against their Government. Here, our Government has just pushed through laws which allow them to arrest us for protesting against ours.
A leading case on the right to protest concerns Russia's criminalisation of protests by Navalnyy, the then leader of the Opposition. Russia said his protests caused noise and disruption (1). Protests causing noise and nuisance are exactly what our new laws target (2).
That case was heard under the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms - and the Court found against Russia. Our own Government has talked of wanting to repeal or disregard that Convention.
Important rights, rights which are the lifeblood of any democracy, are not just imperilled abroad. They are also imperilled here.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
So the Mail is running a puff piece for a Priti Patel crackdown on Russian oligarchs (don't hold your breath waiting for a crackdown against Russian oligarchs who are also Tory donors)...
The highlight of the crackdown seems to be this: properties owned by complex ownership structures will be within the scope of unexplained wealth orders...
All sounds wonderful. Except that the first ever unexplained Wealth Order was obtained against... a property owned by a complex ownership structure (commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-brief…).
Earlier this month we published leaked data showing that Ministers had misled Parliament, the High Court and the National Audit Office over the size of the VIP lane. goodlawproject.org/news/ministers…
When, in October 2020, we published details of the existence of the VIP lane the story was not picked up by the media who could not believe it was true.
Our February 2022 story has had a similar reception. Save for small pieces in The Independent and The Times, this incredibly important story has gone largely unreported.
So, we've had some questions in from The Times and so I thought I'd share our responses here.🧵
The first suite of questions is about standing. And the effect of the Divisional Court's decision on how we work.
To that first suite of questions we have said:
Sometimes, as with the Runnymede case, we’ve worked with partners who clearly have standing. Sometimes we have standing ourselves, as the Courts have repeatedly confirmed. Sometimes we have achieved the outcomes we want by backing cases brought by others.
What Boris Johnson's premiership has shown is how those who rule us - VIP Tory donors, politicians, newspaper proprietors, and the rest of the entitled Establishment - hate being held to the same rules as normal people.
And if you seek to disrupt their ugly status quo they really, really don't like it. Several days after, yes, that Boxing Day I was messaged by a sympathetic Tory insider thus:
This was after I had been monstered for killing a single fox which was caught in netting attacking my chickens on the front page of the Mail. Yes, the Mail whose proprietor's wife boasts in the society pages about her love of hunting - the routine killing animals for fun.