A convenient lie

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One of the convenient lies we are told on a regular basis is that governments and politicians make the laws, but the way in which those laws are enforced is ‘an operational matter’, entirely in the hands of individual police forces, who set their own priorities when it comes to using the limited resources allocated to them by those same governments and politicians. Thus it was parliament, at the behest of the Home Secretary, which declared that showing any sort of support for Palestine Action was itself a terrorist act, punishable by up to 14 years in prison, but it was the Metropolitan Police who decided that this was such a high priority that it justified arresting over 500 people, many of them for doing little more than holding up a placard, and then bailing them on suspicion of terrorism.

Maybe the Home Secretary, an authoritarian to her fingernails, didn’t actually tell the Met that she wanted the maximum number of arrests to be made. Maybe she didn’t even give them the odd nod and wink about her expectations. Perhaps her expectations were already clear enough for the police to ‘know’ what they needed to do. But there are now two possible outcomes. The first is that the authorities really will charge most or all of those people with terrorism, adding to the courts backlog in order to hear cases, most of which will, at huge public expense, end up with a minor fine or even a discharge given the pettiness of the ‘offences’. The second is that they will, rather more wisely, simply drop all further action to avoid a situation where they look like the complete idiots they have made of themselves.

It's possible, of course, that the police have deliberately been heavy-handed in order to expose the ridiculous nature of the law that they are being expected to enforce, in the hope that the government will back off and allow them to get back to dealing with proper crime. That does, though, require rather more cunning and Machiavellianism than the Met are usually known for. And, in any event, Occam’s Razor applies.

There is little doubt as to the guilt of those holding up placards, although that says more about the silliness of the law than the actions of the protesters or the police. In the meantime, it means that the police have released more than 500 suspected terrorists, each of whom has committed an offence carrying a custodial sentence of up to 14 years, onto the streets of the UK to continue their nefarious activities. We are expected to believe two things at the same time: firstly that these are dangerous terrorists who deserve to be locked up for a very long time, and secondly that it is safe to allow them to roam the country. A rational and sensible government might stop and think about the course they are following, but we’re more likely to see them doubling down on the rhetoric. As well as seeing more protests and more arrests. I suppose it’s what the UK deserves for electing an authoritarian and illiberal government.