Transparently In The Open

How perfect a circle. Palestine Action was proscribed as a terrorist organisation so as to ensure the convictions of the Filton defendants, the first four were sentenced as terrorists despite never having been charged as such, and the next day that the courts sat, the day on which the trial of the next eight began with their comrades' heavily publicised sentences for terrorism fresh in the jurors' minds along with the lie of the broken spine, the Court of Appeal upheld that initial proscription.

Also that day, Petro Pochynok was found not guilty, but the convictions of Roman Lavrynovych and Stanislav Carpiuc in time for lunch led to the broadcast at seven o'clock of a Panorama that must have taken months to make. Apparently, the Russians have nothing better to do than to set fire to somewhere that Keir Starmer no longer lived, and to the old car that he had sold to a neighbour, causing little damage and no injury. Nor have they anyone better to do it than Ukrainian rent boys; all three defendants were on Grindr. All the way back to Profumo and beyond, indeed since the dawn of time, states' clandestine agents have maintained contact with the courtesans and streetwalkers patronised by their enemies, but even so. Yet all the way back to Profumo and beyond, indeed since the dawn of time, states' clandestine agents have maintained contact with the courtesans and streetwalkers patronised by their enemies. Lavrynovych has been declared mentally disabled, having scored 66 on the general ability index, with anything below 70 being considered "intellectual disability". Yet he is the sole director of the construction and roofing company that bears his name.

Whether to distract attention from the resignations of John Healey and Al Carns, or to exert pressure for more expenditure than they had been able to secure, or some combination of the two, the Royal Marine Commandos and the National Crime Agency staged a comical act of piracy, and when we all laughed at that, then the dear old BBC was activated to claim that the pesky Russkies were not only setting such fires in between sailing their "Shadow Fleet", but also astroturfing both Islamist and neo-Nazi terrorism. Any incident of either will now be attributed to Russia, which is in reality a major target of both. Not only are we being played, but we are being played in a very dangerous game.

Who is to protect us? The National Security Adviser? Jonathan Powell's company, Inter Mediate, rebranded the man who was then known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani in the manner of "Tommy Robinson", with a $10 million American government bounty on his head, as the man to whom in March Starmer literally gave the red carpet treatment as President Ahmed al-Sharaa of Syria. Al-Sharaa is still massacring Christians as befits a sometime second-in-command both of Al-Qaeda and of the so-called Islamic State, but his Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham has been removed from the list of proscribed terrorist organisations, and Inter Mediate has an office inside his palace. The terrorists are the blind wheelchair users and the octogenarian clergywomen who are silently holding up signs in support of Palestine Action.

In contrasting Palestine Action with the Suffragettes, the Lady Chief Justice demonstrated that her knowledge of the latter had been gleaned entirely from Mary Poppins. (Incidentally, Dennis Skinner always refers to "Shirley Poppins", whose letter presumably inviting Roy Hattersley to join the SDP Hattersley kept but never opened. Will it be opened now? He had no children, so one assumes not.) A Suffragette, Theresa Garnett, horsewhipped Winston Churchill and cut him in the face, although that still got her a shorter sentence than any of the Filton Four. The Suffragettes engaged in bombing and arson against churches, in the same spirit as al-Sharaa, and against railway stations, the Bank of England, and David Lloyd George's country house, among numerous other targets, with more than 300 incidents in 1913 and 1914 alone. They smashed windows in commercial districts, they damaged works of art in galleries, they sent letter bombs, they injured at least 24 people, and they killed at least four. Of course they carried out such operations in secret rather than "transparently in the open", as Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill would have it.

Until its proscription, Palestine Action operated through a website, social media accounts, press releases, and named spokespeople. It has caused at most one injury, and even then without intent. Sergeant Kate Evans walked unaided out of Accident and Emergency. Her hairline fracture could not be detected by X-ray, nor even by her first MRI scan. She was put on over-the-counter painkillers and told to take mild rest for six weeks. She was healed in three months. And the sledgehammer had belonged to Elbit's private security guards, who wielded such weapons in the presence of sworn constables on duty, inflicting far worse injuries on the protestors, including the fully acquitted Jordan Devlin. No security guard has been charged. Think on.