Comment: Burford's critic Muddy Waters badly misfires in its latest bizarre attack

In certain corners of Ivy League universities, a class of academic exists who spends his life trying to prove the works of Shakespeare were written by someone else.

These brainiacs, generally more of a statistical than romantic bent, run every word and grammatical pattern of Romeo and Juliet through algorithms, desperate to spot the presence of a Marlowe or Bacon behind the Bard.

In their frenzied calculations, they neglect one thing; it really doesn’t matter.

Muddy Waters’ latest assault on Burford, where “ex-CIA experts” parse the words of the litigation funder’s responses to its previous attacks, is a similar exercise in irrelevance.

With the distinct whiff of pseudo-science, the spooks find Burford guilty of deploying the rhetoric of “evasion”, “aggression” and “persuasion”.

Well, so what? The first might be a minor sin, but when a bar-room brawler like Muddy Waters accuses you of being “arguably insolvent”, who wouldn’t adopt a healthy dose of the other two?

Muddy Waters argues the analysis is relevant because it suggests its criticisms are true. But that’s just plain wrong. Its claims of dodgy accounting are detailed, specific, and persuasive in many ways. The way Burford values unpredictable ongoing cases does seem dubious; its corporate governance looks shabby, even after last night’s reshuffle.

But the veracity of the allegations will be determined by the facts, not literary criticism.

Today’s scene in the Burford drama makes Muddy Waters look as if it’s running out of ideas. To paraphrase what someone once wrote: it doth protest too much, methinks.