No, no, Yvette

The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, assures us she proscribed Palestine Action based on reliable intelligence that the organisation was planning acts of violence.

I am not reassured. After Saturday's debacle in Parliament Square in Westminster, where the Metropolitan Police spent hours arresting 522 peaceful protesters, many of them pensioners sitting on the grass holding placards supporting Palestine Action, she needs to come clean. Precisely what advice did she receive? When trust in the government is at an all-time low she surely cannot expect us to believe this on her say-so alone.

The cost of Saturday's policing, not just in the Square itself but of the march through London that accompanied it, must have been astronomical, with police reinforcements drafted in from as far away as Wales. Then there's the cost of processing all the arrestees, charging and trying them (if it comes to that) and then, if found guilty under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, imprisoning them for up to fourteen years. And aside from the financial cost, there's the reputational cost to the Met, already stretched to breaking point, and British policing in general. For a Home Secretary this is a terrible own-goal.

A judicial review of Cooper's proscription has been granted by Mr Justice Chamberlain, who said the order against the direct action group risked “considerable harm to the public interest” because of a potential “chilling effect” on legitimate political speech. The hearing will take place later in the year, probably in November. In light of which decision might it not have been wiser to pause any police action against Saturday's protest, other than for disorder? In the event there were five arrests for assaults on police officers, two for public order offences, and one for a racially aggravated offence.

Cooper obviously decided instead to come down hard on protests, presumably to send out precisely the message the good judge warned against. If so, she is skating on very thin ice when her own government is already so unpopular and Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana's proposed new left-wing, pro-Palestine political party has gained 750,000 expressions of interest already. Either she really does possess damning evidence against Palestine Action - in which case the sooner she makes it public the better - or she is incredibly naïve and ill-advised. 

With a net approval rating of -54% the Labour government can't afford this latest blunder.

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