Political Storm Swirls as UK Minister Accuses Police of ‘Playing Favourites’ With Protesters

Britain’s interior minister had penned an opinion piece in which she accuses police of giving left-wing protesters an easy ride while cracking down on the right, but her own government has distanced itself from the piece and there are calls for her to step down.

An opportunity to unseat a Home Secretary loathed by the left for her rhetoric over border control and mass migration manifested Thursday after Suella Braverman penned an opinion piece in the United Kingdom’s newspaper of report pointing out perceived instances of preferential treatment of police towards protesters.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman — the British English name for a government post known as Interior Minister elsewhere — wrote in The Times that:

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.

The article, which expressed concerns about the appearance of “tens of thousands of angry demonstrators… every weekend” in support of Palestine since the Hamas terror attacks last month, was quickly disowned by the government itself, which briefed against its own Home Secretary that it had been published without the permission of the Prime Minister’s office at Downing Street. Conservative Party-adjacent broadsheet The Telegraph reports Downing Street had sent the article back to Braverman with edits to be made, but these were apparently ignored and the article was published anyway.

The opposition Labour Party, which is presently trying to heal its own divisions over Israel-Gaza as enthusiastically pro-Palestine grassroots and elected members rebel against the leadership’s more equanimous position called on the government to punish Braverman for appearing to have broken the Ministerial Code, which requires top government figures not to act in the Media without permission. Others have outright called for her to be sacked, and it is suggested this may be advantageous to some Conservative factions.

Braverman has been accused of “encouraging extremists” in her article asserting London’s police have shown favouritism and that recent pro-Palestine protests in London have echoes of previous marches by terrorist-linked groups in Northern Ireland. Braverman has long been loathed by some for her tough rhetoric on illegal migration to the United Kingdom, however, her government’s track record of actually acting to control that flow suggests her detractors have little to fear.

The article, and its furious denouncement, come just days before the United Kingdom is due to mark Armistice Day on the 11th, the 105th anniversary of the official end of the Great War, and a planned march for central London the same day by pro-Palestine protesters. Braverman and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak have expressed concern of the risk of confrontation, but London’s Police have asserted the planned march route will not go near the national war memorial at the Cenotaph.

While Braverman and Sunak have both intimated the march should be banned, neither have made any moves to do anything about it, merely suggesting the police should consider taking action. As things stand, the law in the UK errs on the side of the presumption of the right to protest and the Metropolitan Police are theoretically operationally independent of the central government.