Terrorist Connections

The Police were anti-white racists who deserved to have wheelie bins thrown at them until the Filton Four were sent down, but now that Stephen Yaxley-Lennon has been arrested under the Terrorism Act, then who knows what the line is, so to speak? As with Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur, the Israel Lobby is doing victory laps over Filton. "In Starmer's Britain, what Israel wants, Israel gets."

The power of a judge to sentence absolutely anything as terrorism is a piece of Covid-era legislation from the Government that also brought us the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act, the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act, the Public Order Act, the Nationality and Borders Act, the Elections Act, the Online Safety Act, the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels), the National Security Act,  and the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act. In "Opposition", Labour supported most of those, did not oppose any of them, and never promised to repeal any of them.

The Food Standards Agency could now commit murder with impunity. As could any Police Force, the National Crime Agency, the Serious Fraud Office, any of the intelligence agencies, His Majesty's Revenue and Customs, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice, the Competition and Markets Authority, the Environment Agency, the Financial Conduct Authority, and the Gambling Commission. Nothing that either Freddie Scappaticci or Wayne Couzens did would now be illegal. Couzens used his valid warrant card, and his Police issue handcuffs, so nothing that he did with them could ever now be a criminal offence. But since 2020, absolutely anything can be sentenced as terrorism. After criminal damage, what next? Shoplifting? Preaching the Gospel? Silent prayer? Cannabis use, although they would have to police that first?

You were all in favour of this when your own coked-up side was setting fire to the contents of wheeled skips and sending them hurtling towards the Police in Southampton, or when your boys were burning people out of their homes because of the colour of their skin in Belfast supposedly because they were bored with no youth clubs, the kind of thing that you have derided when it has been invoked for far less, or because they had been dispossessed by deindustrialisation, which if true would negate the whole of your politics over the last half a century.

Nor did you mind when those detained under counterterrorism legislation were Julian Assange, Vanessa Beeley, Craig Murray, Kit Klarenberg, Richard Medhurst, George Galloway, and Professor Robert Skidelsky FBA, Lord Skidelsky, who, not long before his recent death at the age of 86, was so detained while returning to the Realm of which he was a Peer, the Britain of whose Academy he was a Fellow.

But now it is "Tommy". Kemi Badenoch's contempt of court on live television did not halt the retrial of the Filton Four, nor did it do Badenoch herself any harm with the courts, but will comments from politicians courting the Yaxley-Lennonist vote be treated as indulgently? Or comments, which I most emphatically discourage, from activists, some of whom were also politicians, on the front line against those forces? Yaxley-Lennon has been arrested as a terrorist. We shall know that that was purely performative if he were not charged, or if he were not remanded, or if convicted he were given a lower sentence than any of Filton Four.

Yes, including Samuel Corner. Sergeant Kate Evans walked unaided out of Accident and Emergency. When a small hairline fracture to her transverse process was identified, then she was advised to take paracetamol. It took two attempts to convict Corner of having assaulted her, and even then only by a majority verdict and only of grievous bodily harm without intent. Yvette Cooper proscribed Palestine Action in order to prejudice this case, and she committed contempt of court by justifying that decision in The Observer. Outside the sentencing hearing, the Police arrested about half of the people holding up placards in support of Palestine Action, before giving up because there were so many of them. No organisation connected to Yaxley-Lennon has been proscribed, and despite his being an Irish citizen resident in Spain, the Home Secretary has not removed his British citizenship.

What say those who gave heroine's welcomes to someone whom they had called a political prisoner after she had successfully incited arson with intent to endanger life, and who at the present rate is highly likely to be a member of the next Parliament? We have no dog in the fight at Makerfield, but the defeat of Reform UK by more than the vote for Restore Britain would end any possible excuse for kid gloves.