James Tumbridge

City of London Councillor and Lawyer, views are mine alone, likes don’t endorse, Promoted by James Tumbridge, c/o Guildhall, London, EC2V 7HH.

[Rt Hon Steve Baker FRSA 🗽 @SteveBakerFRSA]

Pleased to be joined by Chagos Islands Attorney General @JamesTumbridge as we unpack reports that the US under President Trump is eyeing a deal to buy the Chagos Islands.

We discuss what that means for British sovereignty, US strategy and the rights of the Chagossian people 👇

[GB News @GBNEWS]

'The Americans are looking at how to protect their long-term interests because they don't trust the British Government.'

Attorney General of the Chagos Government, James Tunbridge responds as the U.S. looks to table a deal on purchasing the Chagos Islands.

[James Tumbridge @JamesTumbridge]

Inauguration of Patent Mediation and Arbitration Centre | James Tumbridge https://t.co/Anu0f9SrVZ

[James Tumbridge @JamesTumbridge]

In Slovenia we launched the Patent Mediation and arbitration Centre for Europe.
It will have a huge impact globally on how we resolve disputes concerning innovation and that importance was demonstrated by the presence of the President of Slovenia: Nataša Pirc Musar

[GB News @GBNEWS]

‘That is a debate that needs to be had with public support.’

Partner at Keystone Law James Tumbridge discusses reports that the Attorney General, Lord Hermer, will review the sentences of the three male teenagers who were found guilty of raping two young girls.

[Voices of WW2 @VoicesofWW2]

On this day in 1944, the Japanese Imperial Army's greatest defeat in history was reaching its peak in a forgotten corner of India.

By nightfall on May 26, 1944, the battle that ended Japan's last offensive of the Second World War was effectively won.

Almost nobody outside the Burma campaign knows the story.

The Japanese 15th Army, 85,000 men under Lieutenant General Renya Mutaguchi, had launched Operation U-Go in March. The plan was ambitious to the point of fantasy. Three Japanese divisions would cross the Chindwin river out of Burma, climb 7,000 feet through monsoon-soaked jungle into India, capture the British supply bases at Imphal and Kohima, and trigger the collapse of British rule in South Asia.

Mutaguchi told his officers they would feast on captured British rations within weeks. He ordered them to bring only three weeks of food. After that, they would live off the enemy.

The British, under Lieutenant General William Slim, fell back into prepared positions on the Imphal plain and at a hill station 80 miles to the north called Kohima. They dug in. They waited.

What followed was 81 days of fighting in conditions that veterans on every other front of the war refused to compare to their own.

At Kohima, the centre of gravity of the entire battle compressed onto a single tennis court behind the District Commissioner's bungalow. British and Indian troops, mostly the 4th Battalion Royal West Kents and the 1st Assam Regiment, held one side of the tennis court. Japanese soldiers held the other. They fought across it for 16 days with rifles, grenades, and bayonets, at distances of less than 30 yards. Officers threw grenades back and forth like cricket balls. The clay court was churned into a graveyard.

The monsoon arrived in mid-May. Trenches flooded waist-deep. Wounded men drowned in their own foxholes. The dead were left where they fell because no one could reach them under Japanese fire. Bodies bloated in the heat. Disease killed almost as many men as bullets did. Typhus. Dysentery. Cerebral malaria.

By mid-May, the 2nd British Division had broken through to Kohima and begun counter-attacking south down the road toward Imphal.

By May 26, 1944, the Japanese 31st Division, which had attacked Kohima, was disintegrating. Out of food. Out of ammunition. Out of medical supplies. The men were eating roots, bamboo shoots, leaves, and in some documented cases, their own dead. Soldiers too weak to walk were left behind in the jungle with a single grenade and instructions to use it on themselves before the British arrived.

By that date, virtually every Japanese position in and around Kohima had been overrun. The road south to Imphal was open.

Mutaguchi refused to authorize a retreat. To withdraw was to admit failure, and Japanese military culture treated admitting failure as worse than annihilation. His subordinate divisional commanders, watching their men starve to death, began retreating anyway, in direct defiance of explicit written orders. Major General Kotuku Sato of the 31st Division simply marched his survivors back toward Burma without authorization and dared Mutaguchi to court-martial him. Mutaguchi did not.

When the Japanese 15th Army finally fell back across the Chindwin in July, of the 85,000 men who had started Operation U-Go in March, 53,000 were dead, missing, or so broken by starvation and disease that they were no longer combatants.

Most of those casualties were not from combat. They were from hunger, dysentery, malaria, exhaustion, and despair. The trail back to Burma was lined with skeletons in tattered uniforms. Indian villagers along the route remembered finding them for years afterward.

Mutaguchi was relieved of command, recalled to Tokyo, and forced into retirement. No Japanese ground offensive of comparable size was ever launched again in the Second World War. The defeat at Kohima and Imphal broke the offensive capacity of the Imperial Japanese Army in mainland Asia.

The British and Indian troops who held the tennis court are commemorated today by a small stone memorial at Kohima War Cemetery. The inscription on it has become one of the most famous epitaphs of the Second World War:

"When you go home, tell them of us and say,
For your tomorrow, we gave our today."

In 2013, British veterans and military historians voted Imphal-Kohima the greatest battle in British military history. Greater than Agincourt. Greater than Waterloo. Greater than D-Day.

Most people in Britain have never heard of it.

[Index & Forget @IndexAndForget]

Cash held in stocks and shares ISA's are to be taxed from April 2027 at 22%

The annual cash ISA allowance will drop to £12,000

But the full £20,000 allowance will remain available to stocks and shares ISAs

What do you think?

[GB News @GBNEWS]

'That money came from ordinary people that were supporting that political party!'

Partner at Keystone Law James Tumbridge, reacts to Nicola Sturgeon's estranged husband pleading guilty to embezzling £400,000.

🇬🇧 Become a Friend of GB News: https://t.co/mNsRsGC8ef

[James Tumbridge @JamesTumbridge]

@ProudofusUK Tower Ward boundary will be beaten today

[James Tumbridge @JamesTumbridge]

@Adrian_Hilton @peteratcmc I was there only recently to see its former pupil become High Sheriff, the harm done by this government to schools is horrific

[James Tumbridge @JamesTumbridge]

Supporting UK Fintech | James Tumbridge https://t.co/daEKOqVTE1

[Ben Obese-Jecty MP @BenObeseJecty]

@Steven_Swinford I wrote to the Foreign Office last month asking what level of security clearance Mandelson had been granted.

If true then this official correspondence from Friday is a lie.

[James Tumbridge @JamesTumbridge]

@DPJHodges @TerraOrBust

[(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges]

Spoken to a number of current and former Westminster officials. They have served over multiple governments. Not a single one of them believes it's credible Robbins would have unilaterally overturned the DV decision. Never mind having done so without consultation with No.10.

[David Maddox @DavidPBMaddox]

I don't normally publish conversations with Downing Street but this was my initial exchange with Downing Street's then director of communications over Mandelson failing vetting on 11 September last year.

[David Maddox @DavidPBMaddox]

Just pointing out that I broke the story 7 months ago that Mandelson failed vetting from the security services and put it to Downing Street...so the idea that Downing Street only found out on Tuesday is complete nonsense.

https://t.co/9Zp14BGCoD

[James Tumbridge @JamesTumbridge]

UN filing accuses UK of forced displacement as Diego Garcia tensions and security fears grow https://t.co/toqAxgBrTn #FoxNews

[James Tumbridge @JamesTumbridge]

@GBNEWS Sorry Stadlen not Staten

[James Tumbridge @JamesTumbridge]

@GBNEWS Maybe Matthew Staten should read before commenting. The Chagossians on the island want the right of abode on a British Overseas Territory not to own and take away the islands from the Crown

[James Tumbridge @JamesTumbridge]

Very grateful that journalists are reporting the fight we have for the rights of Chagossians, it’s time for the Government to let the people go home

[GB News @GBNEWS]

'This gives us the opportunity to make the case for permanent resettlement, which in my view is the long-term solution to those islands.'

International lawyer James Tumbridge reacts as Keir Starmer looks set to drop the Chagos Islands deal as Donald Trump drops his backing.