Our friends at the Good Law Project

[Gymnopedie]

I know this doesn't belong here but given the bollocks from the GLP about issues that do I thought people might be interested.

It's about Professor Jason Arday, a Cambridge academic. The story started when there was a claim that large chunks of his PhD thesis had been taken from another (sometimes not even changing typo errors) published a few years earlier. His justification is that he's autistic and his way of coping is 'mimicry'.

Sine then his many claims about his charity work, fundraising and physical exploits have come under increasing scrutiny - much from the Guardian - and are unravelling fast. He's having to backtrack and 'explain' a lot. He's claimed to have been on a TV programme that he never was and it was chronologically impossible for him to be on it. He has claimed a lot of nasty harassment but has no evidence of it, no photos, no messages, and didn't report any of it to the police. (Well he claims he did once, but the police have no record of it and the story doesn't stack up.)

What does the GLP have to do with it? They're organising an open letter in his support, claiming that there is nothing to see here except that he's a victim of vile racism.

Support for a left wing cause that bears no relationship to the facts? Where have I heard that before?

Charity casts doubts on volunteering record of Cambridge professor (The Telegraph via MSN)

Playbooks, plagiarism and a pig’s head: new claims surrounding a star Cambridge professor | University of Cambridge | The Guardian

Glasgow University denies Jason Arday visiting prof claim | The Herald

@Lalgarh There have been 2 GLP petition/letters - one before and one after JA's death. Simon Baron-Cohen signed the first one, but then later, as it became apparent that at least some of the allegations were true, withdrew his signature.

I’d forgotten about that. Hasn’t he also accused Sarah Phillimore of nearly driving Mollie to suicide? And he’s constantly talking up the suicide stats re “trans kids”. Bit of a pattern.

I will never forgive JM for making me like a Harry Cole tweet, "and his Labour councillor wife" is just perfection.
They're like a mashup of Viz's Modern Parents and It's Grim up North London in the private eye

Am I correct in my memory that this fox was helpless, trapped in wire netting when JoMo decided to beat it to death? I can't find the reference at the moment

And having just been vindicated by her regulator in the face of Maugham's slurs, Sarah is now awaiting costs and an apology from him.

There's only one thing that JM has beaten to death...and it isn't a fox.

Details covered in the thread on the case. JM is coming to a deciscon point, but there are signs he is trying to delay the case and run out Sarah's money:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5511121-glp-are-going-after-sarah-phillimore-and-are-going-to-lose-part-two?page=25

I couldn't see the whole Harry Cole tweet in your screenshot, so I've copied it below. Hope you don't mind, but I thought it was worth seeing the whole thing!

Many years ago I emailed Jolyon Maugham for a right of reply to a fairly innocuous diary story gently teasing that his ginormous multimillion pound property had been photographed in a posh glossy magazine, resplendent with quotes from his Labour councillor wife. He had publicly discussed owning the landmark windmill in the past.
Back then Jolyon was a mere celebrity tax lawyer turned mild Brexit bore, famous only for bludgeoning a fox to death while dressed in his wife’s negligee, rather than the noted civil rights leader we know today. But it was always a struggle to find anyone from the Bar with a good word to say about his conduct or character.
The then QC immediately took to Twitter to publicly claim that I - and my then employer - were threatening to publish his home address in tomorrow’s edition as punishment for his legal work frustrating Brexit. Simply put: a lie. He just completely made it up.
All hell predictably broke loose on here with legions of his droogs piling in - he knew exactly what he was doing. Now I’m a big boy, I can take some social media loons, but here’s where it got weird…
Soon the red phone started ringing.
Editors, the executives, perhaps even proprietors, were being disturbed at the weekend and demanding to know why a reporter was harassing or threatening such an upstanding member of society. Cue: mild newsroom clucking.
God knows what shit he pulled, but it worked for the 100 word diary story that day, even though the POS was lying through his teeth. And Lord knows how many other times this dishonest and pernicious narcissist has attempted a similar ruse.
But I for one was not surprised to see the fox clubber’s reputation as a manipulative bully explode into the public eye this week. The warning signs were always there! And you wonder why they want to regulate the Press…

References to JoMo in a negligee are more than I can cope with. I mean, can you IMAGINE? You are now, aren't you? If I have to have this mental image then so do you all...

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/26/prominent-lawyer-jolyon-maugham-tweets-about-clubbing-a-fox-to-death

That's sadistic of you.

While we're on the subject, I will comment that my husband and I are considerably poorer than the Maughams, and yet my husband can afford his own dressing gown. He's never once needed to borrow mine in order to respond to any outdoor emergency.

There is that anecdote upthread from someone who attended his celebrations for taking silk that mentioned his wife blithely being parachuted into a safe Labour seat.

Only to be interrupted by his cantankerous father pronouncing everything as bollocks

Anything to do with the GOOD LAW PROJECT is relevant here, due to the GLP and MUMSNET sharing a director

What????? Really?

I was a Remainer, so I already knew of Maugham prior to Those Tweets about killing the fox, and I was on the Boxing Day threads about Maugham as it unfolded. I can vividly remember my shock that my fellow bien pensant lefty remainers were handwaving away animal cruelty because it was our man in Havana London wot dunnit. The same people would never have vehemently insisted that a fox stuck in netting had to be "put out of its misery" with a baseball bat if it had been in Nigel Farage's garden.

Actual war reporter

https://nitter.net/OzKaterji/status/2089810176178094433#m

The attacks on Guardian journalist Lanre Bakare, an almost certainly underpaid & diligent reporter, simply for doing his job compassionately, responsibly and accurately, are disgraceful.

I think the TRA /RSOH Jolyonites already have a beef against him because Ukraine

Jonathan Kay of Quillette isn't mincing his words

https://quillette.com/2026/08/17/no-the-media-isnt-responsible-for-jason-ardays-suicide/

Yes.

I just had a peek and sure enough GLP mention that one of their board members is a non-exec director of mumsnet.

Naturally with the level of trust I have in GLP (that level is detectable with electron microscopy if you squint hard enough at the screen), I fact checked this immediately. Sure enough that person is listed on Mumsnet board on Companies House

Yes, there was an amount of kerfuffle on MN about this a few years ago. At the time I thought is was silly to be concerned about it. Partly becasue the NED role is simply about helping to ensure good governance and often seems to be held by people who are essentially governance professionals, rather than being engaged with the substance of an organisation. But also because the memory was still fresh of GLP being a normal and legit and even benign presence, thanks to its work on Brexit. It seemed that JM's bee-ridden bonnet was just one aspect of an organisation that was still capable of good.

Perhaps it is different now. If the odd behaviour (and possibly cynical fundraising) of GLP has become severe enough to actually amount to governance issues, you'd have to be asking questions of people who act for it as NEDs.

Following on from my earlier post about left wing politics in the UK, here are a couple of examples which highlight what I was talking about. How on earth can people vote for a party like the Greens?

https://forums-images.pistonheads.com/535419/202608196997955

https://forums-images.pistonheads.com/123259/202608197504255

That was a really good article from Jonathan Kay, meanwhile someone called Mo Hamzeh has posted this on X.

https://x.com/HeidiBachram/status/2089708194100555889

Sorry if this has been posted already, but Richard Dawkins on X:

‘I am bewildered, and not very impressed, by the visceral, naked, irrational hatred spat out by some defenders of Jason Arday. If a Cambridge professor is accused of being an unqualified charlatan, the accusation might be racially motivated. On the other hand it might not, depending on the evidence. The correct question to ask is not, ”What is the colour of his skin” but “Is it in fact true that he is an unqualified charlatan?” Please examine the evidence before leaping to the assumption of racism. As for the idea that journalists “piled in on him” and “hounded him to his death”, most attacks were against Cambridge University. Jason himself was widely regarded as an unfortunate victim of foolish promotion way beyond his ability to cope. In appointing him to a professorship for which he was manifestly unqualified – in ludicrously describing him as “the best in the world” – certain senior members of the university showed a level of patronising condescension towards black people that could fairly be described as racism, while at the same time making him tragically vulnerable to such attacks as came his way.’

And a reply from a psychologist, Hannah Galen:

‘I've worked with suicidal clients, and I lost a parent to suicide. Suicide is not a joke. However, the idea that it can be turned into a weapon, used to threaten others and to become immune to criticism, is frankly a greater danger to society. A person's fragile connection to life does not place them in a position of privilege in which they are free from criticism. I know I am not a cold person, but these are the hard facts that need to be accepted by the broader public right now.’

I wonder if there is enough information for a comparison between Arday's experience and other people who have defrauded systems to see if he was treated differently or more harshly because of his race.

The only fraudsters I know are white women: Belle Gibson, Alicia Esteve Head, Raynor Wynn and maybe Anna Delvey, though she was a criminal. As far as I know, they got an absolute pasting in the press and beyond. I would probably exclude Rachel Dolezal because hers was specifically about race, which could complicate the situation. It would be good to compare to white men as well, but I can only think of Bernie Madoff, who was doing it for criminal intent.

I just want to add my dismay at the way Arday’s death is being spun. There are a number of threads in other areas of Mumsnet where the prevailing sentiment is ‘he was hounded to his death’ and ‘it’s not like he murdered someone, why were the press going after him’. Completely missing the point.

It would have been quite something if he’d survived being exposed, and come clean about everything - he could have got some real help for his issues, and he would have been able to tell the real story, about how numerous institutions let him down by enabling his fantasies. Someone like him exposing the DEI rot in universities had the potential to make real change and potentially turn the tide on this nonsense. It would also be fascinating to hear how someone builds a fantasy life and his own words on how it all snowballed would have helped us to better understand a condition that is little understood. Having said that, it seems that most fantasists simply can’t handle life when the edifice they’ve built crumbles around them and it’s a huge shame that no real support was given to him after his resignation. It’s utterly tragic for his family, especially his children. And tragic for society that people like Jolyon Maugham are warping the narrative on this situation.