Britain’s health secretary has warned that the mass Black Lives Matter protests are “undoubtedly a risk” in spreading coronavirus.

“Gathering in large groups is temporarily against the rules precisely because it increases the risk of the spread of this virus,” Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock said on Sunday.

“So I would urge people to make their argument, and I will support you in making that argument, but please don’t spread this virus which has already done so much damage and we are starting to get under control,” Mr Hancock told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge.

The remarks came after police in cities across the country have been seen to completely fail to impose lockdown measures, allowing far-left protesters to group closely together in the thousands, many while not wearing masks.

London’s Metropolitan Police acknowledged on Friday that the protests were “unlawful” under current lockdown rules. Scotland Yard’s own chief Cressida Dick even admitted that she feared “serious disorder” and violence if her officers tried to enforce the law.

Police did not fear to intervene and enforce lockdown laws, however, when they arrested and fined protesters “for breach of COVID-19 regulations” at a peaceful anti-lockdown demonstration in Hyde Park on May 31st — the same day that the far-left Black Lives Matter flooded into London, being met with little resistance from the police.

During the first week of the lawless protests, the Conservative government announced that it was going to place a further restriction on law-abiding Britons, ordering them to wear masks when on public transport or face refusal of service or even a fine from the police.

This comes in addition to current restrictions still in place, such as weddings being banned and funerals are restricted in numbers. Grandparents went months before being allowed to hug their grandchildren. Meeting with friends and family within your home is still banned, and an amendment was recently passed that meant that effectively, having sex with your partner in your own home if you do not live together is illegal. Churches are set to reopen next week — but only for ‘private prayer’, meaning no services and, of course, still no weddings.

The UK’s lockdown laws have completely lost legitimacy, however, in light of the authority’s permissive attitude towards BLM protests.

Breitbart London’s James Delingpole said that the BLM protests had “killed” the lockdown, and have “made it quite impossible for anyone with even half a brain to see the ongoing lockdown as anything other than a ridiculous joke”.

While officers have faied to impose lockdown measures on the rioters, they have also failed to prevent violence and destruction in the UK’s cities, particularly in London this weekend.

Vandals desecrated the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square twice, once on the anniversary of D-Day on Saturday and again on Sunday, scrawling in graffiti on the wartime prime minister’s plinth that he was a “racist”. BLM protesters also vandalised the Cenotaph on Whitehall on Saturday, with one activist trying to burn the wartime memorial’s flags on the Sunday.

Not even the Parliament Square memorials to the activists who campaigned for minorities’ rights were spared the assault from the extreme left, with Mahatma Gandhi’s statue having “racist” written under it and Abraham Lincoln’s towering effigy being vandalised with far-left slogans and banners.

Police officers and their horses were also the subjects of abuse, with the Met confirming that during last weekend’s protests 14 police officers were injured, two seriously. Reports circulated in the media that one officer was thrown from her horse and “suffered a broken collar bone, broken ribs, and a collapsed lung” after BLM protesters threw bicycles and flares at her horse, spooking the animal.

The liberal-progressive BBC branded the London protests this weekend, “largely peaceful”.