Usurpation by simulation: the court identity problem

Unpacking how HMCTS has replaced law with "legal theatre" for throughput

If I seem obsessively focused on the arcana of court naming and jurisdiction, it is because the stakes could not be higher. If my hypothesis is correct, and HMCTS has been running voids at scale, then the Single Justice Procedure—the mechanism that processes the majority of criminal cases in England—stands on the brink of collapse. This is no minor technicality. It would be an international-grade scandal: the British government operating ultra vires pseudo-courts for two decades, all for administrative convenience.

Other challenges have tested the boundaries of authority—council tax liability orders among them—but none have questioned the very existence of the tribunals themselves. That is the ground I am standing on. Over recent weeks I have been assembling a Part 8 Civil Procedure Rules claim to test whether my own summons is a nullity. The ramifications make this possibly the most consequential constitutional case in the UK in many years. Gina Miller’s Brexit litigation may have cut deeper into government prerogative, but this case could reach far wider—potentially unravelling hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of prosecutions.

At some point, the mass media will inevitably grasp the story. It is not hard to explain: the state has used counterfeit court names to impersonate lawful authority. I may tread familiar ground in these essays, but the complexity demands repetition. Months of research have gone into packaging the evidence so others need not duplicate the effort—and so I am not the lone voice pressing back. Insiders too are reading, and I hope this gives them both legal and moral clarity. Confronting such a matter requires courage. The aim is not to destroy the system but to redeem it.

Usurpation and simulation are unlawful. Done knowingly, they cross into criminality.

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At the heart of my prosecution is a constitutional failure: the “court” claiming jurisdiction cannot be shown to exist in law. What ought to be a tribunal created by Parliament has been simulated through improvised labels. By severing process from its statutory root, HMCTS has crossed into usurpation—presenting administrative inventions as if they were lawful courts.

Three Names, One Void

This case has travelled under three different identities:

• North Cumbria Magistrates’ Court — on the Single Justice Procedure Notice.

• North and West Cumbria Magistrates’ Court (1752) — on later summonses, correspondence, and DVLA records.

• Carlisle Magistrates’ Court — the physical venue cited.

Each appears authoritative. Yet none corresponds to a magistrates’ court constituted under section 8 of the Courts Act 2003. By law, magistrates’ courts exist only as “the court for the [named] Local Justice Area (LJA)” designated by statutory instrument. Unlike Crown or Family courts, they have no floating, public-facing names.

Rather than anchor process to the LJA, HMCTS substituted aliases—“Carlisle” for the building, “North Cumbria” as a legacy hangover, and “NWCMC (1752)” as a hybrid label. These are allusions, not juridical identities.

A lawful summons could have read: “In the Magistrates’ Court for the Cumbria Local Justice Area (s.8 Courts Act 2003), sitting at Carlisle.” That wording ties venue back to statute. What was issued here does not.

The Simulation of Authority

These labels are not neutral; they carry embedded truth-claims:

• To style something a “Magistrates’ Court” is to assert that Parliament has constituted it by statutory instrument.

• Appending “(1752)” suggests a unique juridical registration, implying traceability to a constituting instrument.

Read together, these signals simulate lawful authority. Yet when asked to produce the statutory instrument for “North and West Cumbria Magistrates’ Court (1752)”, HMCTS and CPS produced nothing. FOI requests, PAP letters, and complaints met only evasion. If the root existed, it would be produced instantly. The silence is proof of absence.

The summons therefore collapses on its own terms: the truth-claims embedded in “Magistrates’ Court” and “1752”cannot be honoured. What looks like jurisdiction is performance.

Multiplicity as Nullity

Jurisdiction must be singular and traceable: public label → statutory instrument → juridical court. Here, three competing labels are offered, none anchored in statute. Multiplicity in this context is not variety but nullity.

Insiders may treat “Carlisle” or “NWCMC” as informal stand-ins for the LJA court. The public does not see the insider map; they see only the label. The law requires the label itself to map—cleanly and publicly—back to Parliament’s creation. Citizens cannot be required to decode puzzles or infer jurisdiction from administrative convention.

In Cumbria, that mapping fails. What is presented is not a court but a set of aliases with no lawful referent. The practical consequence is a vacuum: the summons does not identify a juridical object at all, so legal certainty collapses.

Unequal Justice Across Areas

The statutory model is uniform nationwide (every magistrates’ court exists only as the court for its LJA), but practice is uneven:

• Alignment cases (general pattern): In some areas, signage, correspondence, and venue descriptions consistently reference the LJA court—or use a stable administrative label that, in practice, points transparently back to the LJA. A reasonable reader can verify the juridical root without guesswork.

• Misalignment (Cumbria): Historically split into East, West, and North LJAs and still operating multiple venues (Carlisle, Workington, Barrow), Cumbria lacks a single, stable identity that maps cleanly to the statutory court. Staff and systems have improvised: “Carlisle” for venue, “North Cumbria” as legacy, and “North and West Cumbria (1752)” as a hybrid with no statutory anchor. The result is three public identities, none traceable to the LJA court Parliament actually constituted.

That differential creates arbitrary prejudice. In aligned areas, a summons points plainly to statute; in Cumbria, it obscures it. Equality before the law is broken when one citizen faces a statutory tribunal and another faces a phantom.

Usurpation Disguised as Symmetry

The current practice seems to mimic “floating” models used in Crown, County, and Family jurisdictions—where process may issue under a regional or national label and be allocated to venues. But those models are expressly created by statute. Magistrates’ courts are not.

The analogy is false. Crown and Family courts have statutory naming conventions; every alias points back to a lawful juridical object. Magistrates’ courts do not. Treating them as if they did produces a simulation: an administrative look-alike with no lawful foundation. That is usurpation—administration stepping into Parliament’s shoes to create courts by fiat.

The Citizen Is Not Required to Decode

The law runs forward, not backward. Insiders may start from the juridical referent (the LJA court) and map it to multiple labels; the citizen receives only the label and must be able to trace from label to law. Without a public mapping, jurisdiction is not evidenced; it is only implied. And implication cannot carry the coercive force of a summons.

Silence as Evidence

Repeated requests for the statutory footing of “North and West Cumbria Magistrates’ Court (1752)”—via FOI, PAP, DSAR, and complaint—were met with deflection or silence. If a constituting instrument existed, it would have been produced at once. The refusal or inability to do so is the footprint of absence. Simulation collapses at the point of scrutiny.

Conclusion: Simulation Exposed, Usurpation Laid Bare

By abandoning the Local Justice Area root and substituting improvised labels, HMCTS has simulated jurisdiction where none exists and usurped Parliament’s exclusive role in creating courts. A summons that fails to identify a lawful tribunal is not a technical irregularity; it is a structural void. Once the simulation is exposed, the façade disintegrates. There is no lawful court behind the name, and no jurisdiction to proceed.