Sunday 27 February 2022

If People Want To Support That Struggle?

Tomorrow, the House of Commons will sign off on the Police, Courts, Crime and Sentencing Bill, and demonstrations such as the anti-war ones in Russia will almost immediately become illegal in Britain.

It will not be a matter of invoking public order to arrest a certain number of participants, as has been happening there just as it has always happened here. Unlike in Russia, protest itself will be criminal. Organisers will face potential prison sentences of 10 years.

Whereas there is presumably no plan to prosecute Liz Truss for her incitement of what would be the criminal offence of travelling to Ukraine to fight there. There are people in prison for having gone to Rojava to fight against the so-called Islamic State, and the law would be the same. We have a Foreign Secretary who either does not know that, or does not care.

As Charlie D’Agata, Senior Correspondent of CBS News, said on Friday, “This isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilised, relatively European – I have to choose those words carefully, too – city where you wouldn’t expect that, or hope that it’s going to happen.” So by all means hang the law and go and fight for that, says a woman who truly believes that she ought to be Prime Minister.

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