Jo Maugham

I think this issue must be close to him. I have seen twitter gossip that it is. I think really he should pass this campaign to someone else because the things he is saying about it are rather undermining to glp. I don't actually know that anyone else is involved to hand it to though. Is it a one man band like pp asks?

It's surprising how many lawyers are blocked by him on twitter. Lots of male ones too. People he might actually meet in professional life. Very strange behaviour.

Lol, yes that backfired. I think it’s probably likely that one of his children identifies as trans, or maybe a niece or nephew. He’s way too emotionally involved in the case and his comments about how the judges undermined parental authority suggests that he has serious skin in the game. It also explains the gigantic volte-face from an initially GC position in 2018. I have sympathy with him there (must be completely horrendous to have a child going through that) but he’s making a public laughing stock out of himself and clearly isn’t thinking rationally.

He hasn’t read the room.

Just like he didn't last Boxing Day.

These tweets are a useful guide to how JM views himself:

"I'm sorry-not-sorry for continuing to tweet out @Okwonga's piece (that I regret I missed when he published it in June). But the point he makes - that it's not enough to think yourself good, as though your very presence on this earth were enough - could not resonate with me more."

twitter.com/jolyonmaugham/status/1339282084339331072?s=21

Having posted above I wondered about Maugham the superhero so I had a quick search on twitter and was struck by how often you can find tweeting about him being a "superhero".

I expect he assumes that the demographic who loved him for Brexit will be the same people as will love him for this, because he’s fallen in to that classic lefty trap of “all right thinking people ought to believe this”, which is a trap I’ve come to see I’ve fallen into myself in the past. He believes that those who oppose him are knuckle dragging homophobes and EDL types who’ve never been over the village bridge.

He hasn’t read the room.

because he's loved by a load of trans activists that must mean he's on the right side of history.

It works for Owen Jones.

I think Maugham is foreseeing the end of the road for his Brexit campaigning and was thrilled to find another cause. Over Brexit he ended up as Marmite with loads of people hating his interventions while loads viewed him as a legal superhero. But for his purposes he only needs the right-thinking on his side.

Maybe he's applying a similar template now: because he's loved by a load of trans activists that must mean he's on the right side of history. Perhaps the reasoning goes that if he thinks he's right, then he must be, after all, that worked perfectly for Brexit. The deluded bit comes from him doing this without weighing up the arguments on each side, and not stopping and having a look at some of the people cheering him on.

Could be. I was inclined to think the position he's taking is sincere, because I don't think you'd knowingly deepsix your reputation like that.

Even in the case of Charlie Gard, people were rejecting the idea that a court could order palliative care. It was a preservation of life position.

They weren't rejecting the role of courts in intervening against child abuse, etc. In my opinion, only those very ideologically invested and focused on the trans debate only and people who don't believe in children's rights , would see that tweet without going "WTF?" and they're donating to the crowdfunder already.

You don't really need to be up on Gillick competence to see the issues with his tweet. Just a subscription to Take a Break might make his tweet seem equally irresponsible!

It's possible he is aware but is rabble rousing for money (via the crowdfunder)

Is the GLP basically a one-man band?

I would have thought that finding another UK lawyer unaware of child abuse, Jehovah's Witnesses and blood transfusions, Charlie Gard, the sad case of the conjoined twins, and so on would be quite difficult?

In A-level law, we covered why medical staff might make appeals to a court for a child against the wishes of the parents.

'Staggering ignorance" according to a government advisor.

And, interestingly, someone who used to be a Labour MP.

Maugham is priviledged enough not to understand nor even think about how parents don't always act in the best interests of their kids. That says a huge amount about his life and his narrow view of the world especially when he works in law.

Marina Wheeler is Boris Johnson's ex-wife as well. Not on good terms with him, but it's just possible that she or one of their children might get him to look at this issue.

It’s worth repeating that in the past Maugham has said that areas of law like family and crime are not “prestigious”. He then got into a twitter fight (of course) with women , arguing there is no negative value judgment in calling an area of law less prestigious. So he probably looks down on areas like family and reckons he’s smart enough to just discuss it from first principles. Unfortunately he’s showing his ignorance.

I love it!

Interesting response here from an advisor to the government.

Precisely. I don’t understand how he’s too thick to understand how wrong it is to give free rein to parents to consent on their child’s behalf and also to fail to grasp that the court has an overriding duty to safeguard welfare that extends to making decisions about medical treatment that may conflict with the parents’ view. I mean in the conjoined twins case, the parents objected to separation but the court ruled it should go ahead. There are cases where Jehovah’s Witnesses have wanted to stop their kids having blood transfusion and the court has said no. In the Charlie Gard case, the courts ruled that Charlie should receive only palliative care, despite his parents’ wishes to take him abroad. The idea that the Bell case is the first time judges have ruled on medical matters and overridden parental wishes is ridiculous. He thinks he’s making these really clever points but is just coming across as an uninformed arse.

Hundreds of children are taken into care because their parents' idea of their best interests is actually abusive.