Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s the cursed crusader doing a U-turn at the speed of light. Jolyon Maugham, the not-so-Superman of social media, spent much of lockdown railing against ‘Covid cronyism’, launching lawsuits at the drop of a fundraiser.
But in his ever-online earnestness, it seems that Maugham has slipped up on more than one occasion. Having been accused last year of smearing a Stroud company which provided face shields to the NHS, Maugham is now in the firing line for his claims about a rather more high-profile target: Kate Bingham, the head of the government’s vaccine taskforce.
Earlier this month, Bingham published her account of that experience, with the UK’s vaccine procurement taskforce being widely praised for its foresight and flexibility. She detailed the attacks and abuse in the role – including from none other than Jolyon Maugham. The fox-killing KC has not taken kindly to, er, valid criticism and responded with a Twitter tantrum, declaring that:
A couple of weeks ago, the Mail published this preposterous self-authored hagiography about how the fact that Bingham got pilloried in the press was nothing to do with her failings but all to do with me and the Guardian. None of it was true, of course.
Really? None of it was true? Surely some mistake. Mr S could have sworn that it was Maugham who pompously pontificated in the Guardian about how:
There is an England of my mind. And in it those who have made their fortunes offer their time and talents in service of the public good, modelling self-sacrifice and respect for good governance to ensure the nation thrives. But that England is no longer this England. Take the story of Kate Bingham.’
In that piece he also went on to make insinuations about Bingham’s family connections and then declared that his (ironically-named) Good Law Project was launching a legal challenge to her appointment. He also wrote to the Sunday Times to say that Bingham:
Used that role to share confidential data with commercial contacts and she awarded lucrative contracts to those connected with the government. We used to expect better from our public figures. We are certainly entitled to it.
Maugham was also featured in a second Guardian puff piece in which his associate and Good Law Project board member Lord Wood – a former aide to Gordon Brown – made much of the £670,000 supposedly spent on PR consultants by Bingham. Yet, embarrassingly, Maugham’s aforementioned Guardian opinion piece was subsequently updated in October 2021 to note that:
the Good Law Project announced in June 2021 that it had dropped its legal challenge to the government’s recruitment of Kate Bingham as chair of the vaccines taskforce. Further, to clarify with regard to the PR expenditure: this was approved by departmental officials, under delegated ministerial authority, as Downing Street stated at the time.
This was of course after Bingham and the taskforce were heralded as heroes for successfully securing the jabs which saved thousands of lives throughout 2021. A record to bear in mind, perhaps, the next time that Maugham gets on his soap box to point the finger of blame at others.
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