Police during an Extinction Rebellion demonstration blocking Vauxhall Bridge in central London, April 10, 2022
Right to protest comes under fresh attack as Tories unveil new measures and fines
THE right to protest came under fresh attack today as the Tory government unveiled new measures directed at demonstrators.
Rattled by the repeated huge solidarity marches with Palestine in recent months, ministers presented amendments to criminal justice legislation designed to make protesting harder.
Among the acts now to be criminalised are wearing masks at a demonstration, climbing on war memorials or the use of flares or fireworks.
Protesters engaging in any of these activities now risk fines of up to £1,000.
Nor will they any longer be able to use the right to protest as a defence if they cause serious disruption, a change driven by the refusal of a jury to convict anti-racists charged with hauling down the statute of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol.
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Leading human rights lawyer and peer Shami Chakrabarti said: … “This is more culture war nonsense from the government while children go hungry and the planet burns.”
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Suella Braverman, who lost office trying to ban a Gaza ceasefire protest on Armistice Day, has demanded further measures.
These would include giving ministers, rather than the police, the power to ban marches they do not approve of; prohibit the use of particular slogans or phrases and proscribe groups deemed “extremist” even if they are entirely peaceful.
Former Green Party leader says Labour’s support is needed for chance of defeating DHSC move to push ‘associate’ roles that look like doctors but don’t have medical training
Green peer and former Green Party leader Natalie Bennett has heeded the calls of doctors – and independent MP Claudia Webbe, the only MP to speak against the government’s backdoor legislation when it was pushed through – to stop the government’s dangerous new move to have ‘physician associates’ (PAs) and ‘anaesthetist associates’ (AAs) regulated by the General Medical Council (GMC), despite them not having medical training.
90% of doctors believe this move puts patients at risk and at least two patients have died after PAs, who the patients thought were doctors, dismissed serious medical conditions as a muscle strain and a panic attack respectively.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, Lee Anderson and Liz Truss at the launch of ‘Popular Conservatism’. Credit: PA Images / Alamy
The launch of Popular Conservatism saw attacks on “net zero zealots” and the Climate Change Committee.
Liz Truss’s new ‘Popular Conservatism’ faction of the Conservative Party launched today with attacks on net zero targets and environmental bodies, using the playbook established by libertarian lobby groups.
The self-styled PopCons included politicians critical of climate policies and science, including Lord Frost, who is a director of the climate science denial Global Warming Policy Foundation, as well as Conservative MP Lee Anderson and Reform party president Nigel Farage.
PopCon director Mark Littlewood is the outgoing managing director of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), an influential free market think tank that has talked up its access to government.
The IEA received funding from oil company BP every year from 1967 to 2018, according to an Unearthed investigation confirmed by the IEA. Both IEA and BP have declined to say if this funding continues, when asked by DeSmog.
A branded leaflet handed out at the event, under the heading “what we stand for”, stated: “End net zero zealotry and promote energy pragmatism to provide both security of supply and low prices”.
The leaflet also named the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the government’s independent advisory body on hitting its climate targets, as one of the institutions which “stand in the way of meaningful reform”.
Littlewood’s speech criticised the UK’s net zero target, complaining about “the Climate Change Committee, pronouncing on our progress to the eye-wateringly [sic] expensive and almost certainly unachievable aim of being carbon net zero”.
Lee Anderson, former deputy chair of the Conservative Party, repeatedly attacked net zero in his speech, which he claimed “never comes up on the doorstep” aside from when it is brought up by “the odd weirdo”.
Anderson said: “if we became net zero tomorrow, this country… it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference to the earth’s atmosphere”, pointing to the higher emissions produced by other countries.
Anderson argued that net zero would cost voters money, calling for an “opt-in, opt-out” approach to what he called “green levies” on energy bills, adding: “Not one politician can put their hand on their hearts and tell you how much it’s [net zero] going to cost.”
The CCC has estimated the cost of net zero at less than one percent of GDP, while the Office for Budget Responsibility has said that “the costs of failing to get climate change under control would be much larger than those of bringing emissions down to net zero”.
Liz Truss used her speech to say: “If we look at the net zero zealots that Lee has just been talking about, the need for cheaper energy is being drowned out by some very active campaigners.” She claimed voters “don’t like the net zero policies which are making energy more expensive”.
The International Monetary Fund found in September 2022 that the energy crisis was hitting UK households harder than any country in western Europe, due to the UK’s reliance on gas for heating homes.
Tufton Street Links
Politicians fronting the PopCon group have a history of working with anti-green think tanks and supporting more fossil fuel extraction.
Truss (who went to the University of Oxford with Littlewood) has extensive ties to the IEA, which is part of the Tufton Street network – a cluster of libertarian pressure groups and think tanks that oppose state-led climate action.
In 2022, Truss’s campaign for Tory leader was run by Ruth Porter, a former communications director at the IEA. Once in 10 Downing Street, Truss hired Porter as her senior special advisor, and has since appointed her to the House of Lords. A number of former Tufton Street figures were appointed to government advisory roles during Truss’s short-lived tenure in Downing Street.
The IEA publicly supported Truss’s ‘mini-budget’, which caused economic chaos by promising large tax cuts without explaining how they would be funded. While in office, Truss lifted the UK’s ban on fracking for shale gas, a policy advocated by the IEA. (The policy was ditched by her successor Rishi Sunak.)
The IEA has consistently opposed UK government climate policies, preferring “market solutions”. In October 2022, IEA executive Andy Mayer said the government should “get rid of” its net zero target, which he called a “very hard left, socialist, central-planning model”.
During her 2022 leadership campaign, Truss received £5,000 from Lord Vinson, one of the few known funders of the Tufton Street-based Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s main climate science denial group.
Rees-Mogg also has a long record of opposing climate policies. Earlier this month he said: “the current headlong rush to net zero risks impoverishing the nation to no global benefit on emissions”.
The UK government’s legally-binding target to cut carbon dioxide emissions to net zero by 2050 is part of international efforts to keep global warming below 1.5C.
As Business and Energy Secretary in 2022, Rees-Mogg supported overturning the UK’s ban on fracking, and said “we have to stop demonising oil and gas” in a meeting with the UAE’s state investment company.
He also receives around £29,000 per month to host a show on right-wing broadcaster GB News. A DeSmog investigation last year found one in three GB News hosts spread climate science denial on air in 2022, while more than half attacked net zero policies. The channel‘s co-owner, Paul Marshall, has £1.8 billion invested in fossil fuels via his investment fund Marshall Wace.
Science Denial
Several figures with ties to climate science denial turned out for the PopCon launch. They included Lord Frost, a trustee of the GWPF who last year said global warming could be “beneficial”, along with Dame Andrea Jenkyns, who sits on the board of the GWPF’s campaign arm, Net Zero Watch.
The IEA and GWPF have both received funding from Neil Record, a Conservative donor who was IEA chairman until July 2023 and remains chair of Net Zero Watch. Record has donated thousands to Tory MP Steve Baker, an IEA ally and former GWPF trustee who has claimed much climate science is “contestable” and “propagandised”.
The PopCon launch was also attended by GB News host Nigel Farage, honorary president of right-wing party Reform UK, which campaigns to “scrap net zero”. Last year the party received £135,000 from donors who spread climate denial or had fossil fuel interests. Reform leader Richard Tice has claimed that “CO2 isn’t poison; it’s plant food”.
Farage posed for a photo at the PopCon event with Lois Perry, director of climate denial group CAR26, who is running for leader of UKIP and last month said she does not believe in human-caused climate change.
Addressing the audience Truss made a series of bizarre attacks on the Left, taking aim at “wokeism” and said the Tories had failed to “take on the left-wing extremists”.
“Wokeism seems to be on the curriculum,” said Truss. “There is confusion about basic biological facts, like what is a woman.
“Look at the net zero zealots, if you listen to the Today programme, I don’t recommend it, you’ll hear demands for more public spending.”
Truss went on to warn that the left were “on the march and actively organising”.
“These people have repurposed themselves, they don’t believe they are socialist or communists anymore. They say they’re environmentalists, they say they’re in favour of helping people across all communities, they are in favour of supporting LGBT people or groups of ethnic minorities.
“So they no longer admit that they are collectivists but that is what their ideology is about.”
She went on to claim that anti-capitalists were being “pandered to” by the Government and that Conservative values were being eroded and said it was “only through Conservative values that we can give the British people what they want”, however fell short on saying what this was exactly.
Former prime minister Liz Truss during the launch of the Popular Conservatism movement at the Emmanuel Centre in central London, in a bid to rally right-wing Tory MPs ahead of a general election this year, February 6, 2024
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Running through a list of enemies almost longer than her catastrophic time in Downing Street, Ms Truss nevertheless claimed that Britain was “full of secret Conservatives — people who agree with us but don’t want to admit it,” while the Tory party had been appeasing “left-wing extremists.”
Painting a picture of a world on the edge of socialism, the former prime minister, best known for crashing the economy in a matter of days, asserted that “the left have been on the march.”
“They have been on the march in our institutions, they have been on the march in our corporate world, they are on the march globally,” she claimed.
Taking on this menace and “changing the system itself” will require “resilience and bravery,” Ms Truss added.
Unfortunately, rather than resilience and bravery, she had to hand only Lee Anderson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, former frontbenchers taking a break from their present gigs on GB News.
Demonstrators marching through central London last month in solidarity with Palestinians. Photograph: Vuk Valcic/Zuma Press Wire/Rex/Shutterstock
Hundreds of thousands of pro-Palestine demonstrators are expected to march through central London on Saturday in the UK’s first national demonstration since the UN’s international court of justice ordered Israel to ensure its forces do not commit acts of genocide in Gaza.
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Last Friday, the international court of justice ordered Israel to ensure its forces did not commit acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. In an interim judgment, the president of the court, Joan Donoghue, said Israel must “take all measures within its power” to prevent acts that fall within the scope of the genocide convention and must ensure “with immediate effect” that its forces do not commit any of the acts covered by the convention.
Earlier this month, the PSC organised a march of hundreds of thousands of people through central London. Little Amal, a 4-metre puppet of a Syrian child refugee, accompanied protesters as they marched towards Parliament Square. The following weekend, hundreds joined a multi-faith peace march in solidarity with people affected by the conflict.
The Gaza health ministry says at least 27,131 Palestinians have been killed and 66,287 have been injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and about 250 abducted. Satellite images analysed by the United Nations Satellite Centre show that 30% of Gaza Strip’s buildings have been destroyed or damaged. Unicef estimated on Friday that 170,000 children in Gaza were unaccompanied or had been separated from their families.
This will be the eighth National March for Palestine organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign since October.
Image of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. UK halts aid to UNRWA in Gaza over Israeli allegations that 12 staff from a total of 13,000 were involved in the 7 October 2024 attack on Israel.
Inequitable distribution of income has severe consequences.
The Post Office scandal has once again exposed the shortcomings of performance related pay for company directors. The company had remuneration committees staffed by hand-picked obedient non-executive directors. None opposed the rewards accruing from wrongful prosecution of more than 900 subpostmasters and dutifully rewarded directors. Paula Vennells, chief executive from 2012-2019 picked up bonuses of £2.2m for wrecking lives.
Performance related pay has boosted the remuneration of directors even when performance is negative, as exemplified by the 2007-08 financial crash, collapse of Carillion, BHS, London Capital and Finance, Patisserie Valerie, Debenhams and others.
The bottom line is a key feature of most performance related remuneration schemes. The median tenure of a FTSE100 CEO is about 3.75 years and temptation is to grab higher pay in the shortest possible time. Profits can be boosted by depressing wages, dodging taxes, postponing repair and maintenance; cutting investment and spending on innovation; and by using novel accounting practices. Directors are rewarded for such tactics as shareholders chase short-term returns. Little attention is paid to the long-term damage and social cohesion.
Workers invest their brain, brawn and life in companies but have become just another disposable commodity. In the words of former US President Abraham Lincoln: “Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”
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Inequitable distribution of income has severe consequences. Millions struggle to have access to good food, housing, education, pension and other essentials. Inequalities are a threat to democracy as the rich are able to control media, buy lobbyists and fund political parties to advance their interests, to the exclusion of the vast majority of the people.
“I have never been more upset and disappointed in our current government”
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“I think a ceasefire is crucial,” one audience member said, adding: “What I also think is crucial is that the UK government is held to account for their role in licensing arms to Israel at the moment.” Her contribution was met with applause from the rest of the audience.
Another member of the audience echoed her comments, saying: “I have never been more upset and disappointed in our current government, with how they have dealt with the situation.”
He then went on to say: “Whether it’s the Conservative Party, and even the Labour Party – it’s an absolute disgrace. How many lives need to be lost? We have been 25-30,000 Gazan lives, people who have done nothing wrong. I completely echo what you say. Israel do have a right to defend themselves – absolute. But at the risk – not at the risk – the death, murder of 25-30,000 people who have done nothing wrong, I can’t understand this.”
Four years on after Britain left the European Union, a damning new poll shows just how disillusioned the public are with Brexit, with the majority believing it to be a failure.
The poll, carried out by Ipsos for the Evening Standard, found that 57% believe Brexit has been more of a failure than success, while only 13% say that it has been a success.
Younger adults, Londoners, and graduates are more likely to say that Brexit has been a failure.
A breakdown of the survey results showed that 70% of 18 to 34-year-olds think Brexit has been more of a failure, as do 64% of 35-54s, compared to 38% of those aged 65+.
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Many of the promises made by Brexiteers have failed to materialise, including grater control of borders, free trade deals with America and of course who could forget the promise to invest £350 million more a week into the NHS after Brexit.
