Labour MPs who voted for, or abstained on, the government’s dishonest ‘terror’ ban on anti-genocide group Palestine Action now say that government ministers lied to them about the ban and pressured them into supporting it.
Then-home secretary Yvette Cooper falsely claimed that intelligence and security advisers had recommended the ban. She also rigged the parliamentary vote on it by grouping Palestine Action with violent neo-nazi groups, forcing MPs to either vote for all to be banned, or all not to be.
“Egregious overreach”
But now, MPs experiencing ‘buyer’s remorse’ say that then-security minister Dan Jarvis lied to them, saying that the ban would never be used to arrest peaceful protesters. One MP said:
That is very clearly not the case. People who just go to a protest, a general Palestine protest, and hold up a sign, that is egregious overreach.
Approaching 5,000 have been arrested so far for opposing the ban.
No excuse
Only 26 MPs voted against the ban, with 114 Labour MPs abstaining. Those who voted for the ban or abstained on the vote have no excuse. When a Starmerite MP’s lips are moving, they are lying – and both United Nations experts and human rights groups had been vocally warning well before the vote that it was an Orwellian attack on free speech and protest rights.
Labour MP Clive Lewis, who did vote against the proscription, said most of the Labour MPs he knows “have buyer’s remorse” about their support or abstention:
Of all the toxic legacies Starmer left us, this is one of the most radioactive,” he said, referring to former prime minister Keir Starmer, who resigned in July.
Too late now for cold feet. The Supreme Court will now decide whether the ban was unlawful, but the hearing has had all the signs of being a rigged ‘kangaroo court’ in the government’s Israel-manipulated favour.
Israel is a terror state and the Burnham government is no less a collaborator in its crimes than the Starmer shambles that preceded it.
Header image: Steve Walker
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