Campaigners and MPs have dismissed the prime minister’s claim as hyperbolic, alarmist and illiberal
Good morning. When Rishi Sunak (eventually) decided to take action against Lee Anderson after he claimed that the city of London, and Sadiq Khan, its mayor, were under the control of Islamists, people asked why he was not prepared to discpline, or even criticise, the former home secretary Suella Braverman, who had said something even stronger. “The truth is that the Islamists, the extremists and the anti-Semites are in charge now,” she said in a Telegraph article. It was assumed that Sunak did not want to pick a fight with her because she has too much support within the party.
Now it seems there is another explanation: Sunak did not criticise Braverman because he broadly agrees with her. That is the implication of a No 10 briefing last night, which included this quote from what Sunak told a policing roundtable earlier in the afternoon. He said:
There is a growing consensus that mob rule is replacing democratic rule. And we’ve got to collectively, all of us, change that urgently.
We can make a start today with the new Democratic Policing Protocol …
Talk of ‘mob rule’ wildly exaggerates the issue and risks delegitimising the rights of peaceful protest.
Freedom of expression and assembly are absolutely fundamental rights in any free and fair society. The UK has undergone a major crackdown on protest rights in recent years, with peaceful protest tactics being criminalised and the police being given sweeping powers to prevent protests taking place.
Beyond startling. Hysterical, fear mongering nonsense. There is no “mob rule” in England.
Unless one regards the Tory Party as an unruly mob. Probably consensus on that.
Continue reading…Campaigners and MPs have dismissed the prime minister’s claim as hyperbolic, alarmist and illiberal Good morning. When Rishi Sunak (eventually) decided to take action against Lee Anderson after he claimed that the city of London, and Sadiq Khan, its mayor, were under the control of Islamists, people asked why he was not prepared to discpline, or even criticise, the former home secretary Suella Braverman, who had said something even stronger. “The truth is that the Islamists, the extremists and the anti-Semites are in charge now,” she said in a Telegraph article. It was assumed that Sunak did not want to pick a fight with her because she has too much support within the party.Now it seems there is another explanation: Sunak did not criticise Braverman because he broadly agrees with her. That is the implication of a No 10 briefing last night, which included this quote from what Sunak told a policing roundtable earlier in the afternoon. He said:There is a growing consensus that mob rule is replacing democratic rule. And we’ve got to collectively, all of us, change that urgently.We can make a start today with the new Democratic Policing Protocol …Talk of ‘mob rule’ wildly exaggerates the issue and risks delegitimising the rights of peaceful protest.Freedom of expression and assembly are absolutely fundamental rights in any free and fair society. The UK has undergone a major crackdown on protest rights in recent years, with peaceful protest tactics being criminalised and the police being given sweeping powers to prevent protests taking place.Beyond startling. Hysterical, fear mongering nonsense. There is no “mob rule” in England.Unless one regards the Tory Party as an unruly mob. Probably consensus on that. Continue reading…