Filed under: HOW DARE YOU

Suella Braverman, Home Secretary of the United Kingdom, has gone and done the unthinkable – she has questioned the supposed impartiality of London’s Metropolitan Police force. She didn’t do it in off the cuff remarks or at a tea, either.

She lit off in an op-ed, apparently without even informing her boss – Prime Minister Rishi Sunak – that she was planning on sharing her opinion.

And YOICKS

Suella Braverman: Police must be even-handed with protests
There is a perception that senior officers play favourites when it comes to protesters

In this country we pride ourselves on our long-established traditions of freedom of expression. These liberties consist not only of freedom of speech but also freedom of assembly.

The right to protest in public is a cornerstone of democracy. That is why peaceful marches are never banned and even controversial and disruptive ones are policed rather than blocked.

Only in the most exceptional circumstances do the authorities step in. The way the law works is clear: if a chief constable believes that there is a serious risk of disorder which the police will struggle to contain, he or she can ask the home secretary to ban a march. Even then, a static protest can take place.

…It is the pro-Palestinian movement that has mobilised tens of thousands of angry demonstrators and marched them through London every weekend. From the start, these events have been problematic, not just because of violence around the fringes but because of the highly offensive content of chants, posters and stickers. This is not a time for naiveté. We have seen with our own eyes that terrorists have been valorised, Israel has been demonised as Nazis and Jews have been threatened with further massacres.

Each weekend has been worse than the previous one. Last Saturday, in central London, police were attacked with fireworks, train services were brought to a halt by demonstrators and poppy sellers were mobbed and prevented from raising funds for veterans.

And then she does the unthinkable – hits the forbidden fruit. The protected classes.

…The answer must be: even-handedly. Unfortunately, there is a perception that senior police officers play favourites when it comes to protesters. During Covid, why was it that lockdown objectors were given no quarter by public order police yet Black Lives Matters demonstrators were enabled, allowed to break rules and even greeted with officers taking the knee?

Right-wing and nationalist protesters who engage in aggression are rightly met with a stern response yet pro-Palestinian mobs displaying almost identical behaviour are largely ignored, even when clearly breaking the law? I have spoken to serving and former police officers who have noted this double standard.

Football fans are even more vocal about the tough way they are policed as compared to politically-connected minority groups who are favoured by the left…

This little op-ed has ignited a firestorm.

London’s mayor is in a snit.

Braverman's article is pretty mild on the facts. The reason it has provoked such wild opposition is that she is criticising an organising principle for many of our institutions, the Labour Party especially.

Favouritism by identity. The system of diversity. Uniting by division. https://t.co/Z9Sj941zIs

— Ben Cobley (@bencobley) November 9, 2023

I think the hyperbole is something else for what was a pretty low-key, even-handed little piece. But I get the feeling Braverman isn’t very popular to begin with.

Yvette Cooper slams the absent Home Secretary Suella Braverman.
She asks if Rishi Sunak endorses Braverman's comments. If he doesn't he should sack her, if he does – they should both go#GeneralElectionNow #BravermanOut #Sunakered https://t.co/Tq1qwX52YP

— Wren 💙🇪🇺 (@Wrenjh) November 9, 2023

The funny thing is, X is full of videos of the Met cops doing precisely what she’s accused them of. I used one just the other day, when a British fellow with a Union Jack asks the cop straight up why they’re being pushed around, “And yet when they march down with hundreds of Palestinian flags, you won’t say a word.” And the cop tells him,

“Because there’s way more of them than there are of us.“

I said that the Veterans were cautioned by Police. They were. This is an example of activists using @CommunityNotes to distract from the event.

— David Vance (@DVATW) November 5, 2023

There are calls for Braverman’s scalp, not just for besmirching the fine reputation of London’s cops, but for having the temerity to describe the pro-Hamas marches as “hate marches.”

I don’t see the problem with calling a terrorist sympathizer a terrorist sympathizer, but the description has incensed a bunch of people who are sensitive to the truth.

…Suella Braverman, the home secretary, nonetheless wants to stop a pro-Palestine march due to take place in London on November 11th. She has described it as a “hate march” that displays “thuggish intimidation and extremism”. If her words were intended to foment division, they have succeeded. Some far-right agitators have in recent days urged supporters to “defend” the Cenotaph, a monument to the war dead in central London. That may have prompted the Metropolitan Police to urge organisers of the march to cancel it.

Again, not seeing the lie here – just sayin’. When you consider that Hamas is directly involved – documented – with the organization of every single pro-“Palestinian” weekend march in London to date?

A direct link between Hamas and the London "pro-Palestine" protests. These marches are not about peace. They advance the Hamas terrorists' agenda.

Former Hamas chief ‘behind pro-Palestine Armistice Day protests’ https://t.co/xfuZM2eR1P

— Nile Gardiner (@NileGardiner) November 6, 2023

They are the very definition of “hate” personified.

…Muhammad Kathem Sawalha led the proscribed terrorist group in the West Bank in the late 1980s and is alleged to have “masterminded” its military strategy with involvement as recently as 2019, before moving to Britain where he lives in a London council house.

He is a founder of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), one of six groups behind the under-fire march in London on November 11, and Israeli authorities claim his son, Obada Sawalha, is now its vice-president.

The revelation comes as The Telegraph has discovered that half of the groups organising the march – who are still defying calls from the Metropolitan Police to call it off – have links to Hamas

Of course, without even attempting to rationally discuss any aspect of her opinion piece, fellow members of Sunak’s government are scrambling to make sure they cover their own keysters.

Chaos reigns. Transport Secretary Mark Harper offering an entirely different assessment to the govt’s own Home Secretary about police behaviour and how they handle protests. pic.twitter.com/pKzVDCZMSo

— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) November 9, 2023

Word is that Sunak is loathe to keep her but just as loathe to sack her because Braverman has a base he needs badly. Her Tory supporters call her “the face of the silent majority,” and in an election cycle as fraught as this one, Sunak does not want to gamble on alienating them over what many Brits see as someone finally speaking plainly. And speaking for them.

A lot of that silent, traditional British majority is terrified about what they have been seeing. They feel powerless in the face of what is in their streets and now codified in their laws. They see this sort of power taking over their country.

One of the reasons I think Labour's going to have a lot of trouble in government is the pressure it will come under from inside and out to bring in an Islamic blasphemy law – under the guise of stopping Islamophobia. This would make us an Islamic state of sorts. https://t.co/GwQw5RaBzv

— Ben Cobley (@bencobley) November 9, 2023

Do they stay silent?

What do they do when there’s no one left who speaks for them?