CAMPAIGNERS today slammed the “irresponsible comments” of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak claiming that Britain was descending into “mob rule.”
The organisations which have together called the immense demonstrations of solidarity with the Palestinian people warned that the government was threatening “the long tradition of freedom of protest and expression in this country” and its dire picture bore no “resemblance to reality.”
Mr Sunak has bludgeoned police chiefs into agreeing a new protocol to clamp down on democratic protests.
He had told the top cops at a Downing Street meeting that “there is a growing consensus that mob rule is replacing democratic rule.
“And we’ve got to collectively, all of us, change that urgently,” he said.
Downing Street today was unable to explain where this “consensus” could be found, and Amnesty International was among those saying that Mr Sunak “wildly exaggerates the issue.”
Measures presented to Parliament included £31 million to be spent on protecting MPs, whose safety has been in the spotlight since Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle cited it as a reason for tearing up parliamentary procedures in the Gaza debate last week.
The police have also been told to act against protests outside MPs homes, although the organisers of the pro-Palestine demonstrations have made it clear that they do not support such stunts.
There are also plans to make march organisers give police at least six days’ notice of their intentions, a condition almost invariably fulfilled anyway.
The more sinister proposal is to keep protesters away from centres of democracy, like Parliament, MPs’ surgeries or town halls.
The organisers of the Palestine demonstrations, including Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Stop the War, said in their joint statement that the proposals “can only be properly understood as an attempt to insulate politicians from public opinion and democratic participation.”
“As such they are an attack on democracy not a defence of it. The protests to which Rishi Sunak objects have been fuelled by the huge democratic gulf between the majority of the British population on the one hand, which opposes Israel’s genocidal attacks on Gaza, and most politicians on the other,” the statement read.
Labour indicated backing for the government’s new measures while expressing reservations about some of the language.
Left campaign group Momentum condemned the move, with a spokesman saying that “it is outrageous that Labour is supporting the Tories’ latest attack on our democratic freedoms,” even as a police chief “makes clear that more police powers are not needed.”
