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Article 50, our new crowdfunding campaign, and the latest on our Electoral Commission case – Newsletter

17th December 2018

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Hello!

We’ve been rather busy lately…

Together we have done an extraordinary thing

As you’ve probably seen on the news, the Court of Justice of the European Union decided that the UK can revoke Article 50 without asking permission from other EU member states. We can cancel Brexit without cost. Control over the nation’s destiny now rests in the hands of our MPs. It is hard to overstate this achievement.

In legal terms it is an extraordinary thing for a small band of crowdfunders to defeat all of the Government, the EU Commission and the EU Council representing the other 27 member states. Most people thought this was impossible

And politically we have shifted the conversation. We could give you many examples – a very senior figure in the think tank world wrote to us and said we had “rewritten history”. JP Morgan said that the outcome of the case was the main reason for their doubling their base case estimate of the prospects of us remaining. All around us, we see the conversation changing.

We did this together.

But the Article 50 case is not over. We are now going to ask Scotland’s Highest Court to determine exactly what Parliament needs to do revoke the Article 50 Notice. Our fight to give Parliament the clarity it needs and deserves to do the right thing continues. Please support the case here.

Our director, Jolyon Maugham QC, wrote about the political impact of the judgment. You can read the article here, and you can also write to your MP.

Our new crowdfunding campaign

We have been extraordinarily successful. Our victory in the European Court of Justice is the latest in our long list of successes.   

But we’re a tiny organisation, we don’t have even one full-time employee. Our Director is entirely unpaid. Because we do work at the sharp end most of the big foundations won’t fund us. And today, after winning what may very well be the most important piece of litigation in the UK in modern times, we were turned down for funding by a foundation with a specific focus on public interest litigation. We cannot sustain the present situation where we operate without the money to fund a proper infrastructure.

You can read more about our new crowdfunding here.

An update to our Electoral Commission case

In our last newsletter, we told you that we had received a response from the Electoral Commission to our formal letter threatening legal proceedings in relation to the DUP’s acceptance of a donation from the secretive Constitutional Research Council. The Commission sought to impose an obligation on us to keep their response confidential, but we felt that it was in the public interest to release it.

Several news organisations expect to cover the content of that letter, and the formal commencement of further proceedings against the Electoral Commission early next week. We will then publish that letter.

For a background to the case and our crowdfunding campaign, click here.

News from our director

Our director Jolyon Maugham QC wrote a piece for the Financial Times on why he brought the Article 50 case. You can read it here.

How can you help

If you think our work will be of interest to friends and family – please send them this email and invite them to join our mailing list. If you like what the Good Law Project is doing, please consider becoming a member or making a one-off donation.

Thank-you,

The Good Law Project

@GoodLawProject