BBC segment on the 🇨🇳 mega embassy hearing today featuring me and Mark Nygate of @StopTheEmbassy

❗️🇨🇳 Mega-embassy judicial review hearings tomorrow and Wednesday. Here's what to expect: 1⃣ It would be fairly normal to lose at this stage (administrative court), and then to appeal. A case of this significance naturally points towards to the higher courts. However: 2⃣ The case for the claimants (Royal Mint Court Residents Association @StopTheEmbassy) is strong, and the judge, Lady Justice Lieven, has a reputation for robustly defending the rule of law. 3⃣ Everything is arguable in the law, and nobody should be over-confident in litigation. We don't know which way this is going to go, but we are hopeful. 4⃣ We also don't know when to expect the judgment. Could be a while. The judiciary recess may delay it. 5⃣ The grounds have been set out in some detail in the press, but our ground 1, which addresses enforceability, is a real problem for the government. See the 📸 below, which is a transcription of the letter Boris Johnson sent to Wang Yi in 2018, which, by the way, the UK government refused to release (got a copy anyway). This clearly indicates that diplomatic consent was given in 2018, at which point, under UK law, inviolability attached to the land. To be clear: Royal Mint Court has been inviolable Chinese government land since 2018, which creates major headaches for the enforceability of conditions agreed in the subsequent planning application. 6⃣ If we lose, we will appeal. If the Government loses, I don't know what they will do. A part of me suspects that they hope we will win, so they can blame us in discussions with the Chinese side. This won't work, however, because the CCP does not understand why Ministers simply couldn't make the mega embassy happen for them, and were totally flummoxed by our processes, especially the humiliation of being rejected unanimously by Tower Hamlets Council the first time they applied. Beijing will blame the Government, and you can confidently predict that they will try to punish the UK in the event that their geopolitical ambition is frustrated by a merry band of Tower Hamlets residents and @ipacglobal 7⃣I won't set out all the other grounds here, but will underline that this case will be decided on planning merits alone. That means that geopolitical issues will barely feature. We are trying to establish that the Government acted unlawfully in approving the mega embassy. We had to excise our grounds which alleged that other matters had been taken into account in determining this application (clearly proven by Boris' letter below, IMO, but proving that in court would have entailed costly disclosure hearings). The Government has endless money to deploy, we don't. 8⃣ That said, with the help of superb dissident organisations and ordinary Brits, we managed to raise 215k, and I personally raised more to ensure we have enough to fight this case with the best counsel available. It's incredible to think of the thousands of hours of effort we and the residents have had to put in to defend the UK from this monstrous idea, which would be a disaster for UK national security, and project CCP power to the whole of Europe. I'll try to keep you posted from the courtroom, with the usual caveats surrounding restrictions.

#BREAK Judge REJECTS government’s attempt to dismiss the #megaembassy Judicial Review! Also relying on national security considerations to avoid disclosure. Main hearing early July. 💪

#NEW Mega-embassy judicial review claimants write to @GOVUK demanding disclosure of Government documents. It’s going to get messy. telegraph.co.uk/politics/202…

Thanks @Geri_E_L_Scott for this @thetimes interview covering: 1️⃣ Mega-embassy campaign moving to the courts 2️⃣ Govt abdication of national security responsibilities 3️⃣ Why caring about 🇨🇳 should be a left-wing cause 4️⃣ Why Taiwan is 🇬🇧’s problem + more: thetimes.com/uk/politics/art…