The government is engaged in an active attack on our civil liberties by curtailing the right to protest—it’s important to emphasise that this is being done for reasons unrelated to the pandemic, the legal changes are intended to be permanent.
The police crackdown bill includes provisions to make it an offence to cause a ‘public nuisance’ which is defined as widely as causing ’serious annoyance’ or ’serious inconvenience’ to others. It is unsurprising that groups like Amnesty International and Liberty have declared their opposition to the bill.
The Conservatives are bent on protecting and promoting corporate power to the detriment of all else, including our democratic rights. The fact that nearly every Conservative voted for the bill on its second reading tells you what kind of party is in power.
They don’t care a jot about the rule of law. We know that because they’ve already voted for bills in the Commons giving undercover agents immunity from prosecution for offences that could be as serious as murder, and they’ve voted to restrict the right to bring prosecutions against British soldiers accused of war crimes in overseas operations. The Labour Party should have actively opposed this authoritarian legislation, but it failed to vigorously do so under Starmer’s morally rudderless leadership.
We also know the Conservatives don’t care about the rule of law because they’ve announced that they want to increase our number of nuclear warheads, against our commitment to disarmament through the non-proliferation treaty, and the government is still authorising the sale of weapons to the murderous Saudi regime.
We are ruled by a cabinet of deeply corrupt, deeply amoral individuals. There are few checks on their power besides the democratic means we have to force them to drop their hideous agenda.
Notes in the Margins of the Days 