Time to lift Palestine Action proscription

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Miliband’s statement was a tribute, in large part, to the extraordinary mass movement of solidarity with the Palestinian people which has dominated Britain’s streets for nearly three years now.

The Foreign Secretary has, in fact, acknowledged this. “Gaza mobilised a whole generation of people, and those people were right, not wrong,” he had told a podcast co-hosted, incongruously enough, by Alastair Campbell.

This admission therefore begs a question. When will the government cease its persecution of pro-Palestinian protesters?

It could rein in Metropolitan Police boss Mark Rowley, who has indulged in political attacks on the movement and sought to put considerable obstacles in the way of its marches, using the most spurious pretexts.

It could repeal laws aimed at restricting the right to protest, which have led to arrests of leading organisers of solidarity demonstrations.

Above all, it must lift the proscription of Palestine Action as a “terrorist” organisation, an entirely unwarranted extension of anti-terrorism legislation to cover a group engaged in non-violent direct action targeting those institutions which have enabled to Gaza genocide.

This authoritarian act, likely taken at the prompting of US President Donald Trump, has led to the sentencing as terrorists of people who have hurt nobody.

It has indirectly led to barristers facing jail for reminding jurors of the right to exercise their consciences before deciding on cases before them.

And it has led to the arrest of thousands of citizens, all entirely peaceful and many of them elderly, for holding placards expressing support for Palestine Action and opposition to genocide.

This ought to shame any society claiming to value free speech and other democratic liberties.

To their eternal shame, most Labour MPs allowed themselves to be whipped into supporting this proscription by the unlamented Keir Starmer.

Burnham now has the chance to right this wrong. His Foreign Secretary has admitted that those protesting over Gaza are on the right side of history.

If those protests are felt to have crossed a line, there are other laws available to address the problem. Let juries decide.

Nothing could announce a change of governmental approach more decisively, or help clear the empoisoned political atmosphere more thoroughly, than this simple step. Labour should take it without delay.

KEMI BADENOCH often engages her mouth, and her prejudices, without switching on her brain. Nevertheless, even by her own debased standards, her attack on the appointment of TUC general secretary Paul Nowak to the board of the Bank of England was remarkably stupid.

A trade union leader has sat on the board — which does not set interest rates but administers the bank — for decades. Nowak succeeds Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway, who was preceded in turn by Lord Prentis of Leeds, both appointed by the last Tory government.

Before that Lord Barber of Ainsdale and Lord Morris of Handsworth did shifts in Threadneedle Street.

The bigger question is why trade union leaders accept these appointments. It is not for pecuniary motives — Nowak has made clear he will donate his board fee to good causes.

And there is scant evidence of any real benefit to working people accruing.

It appears to be the same illusion that sends many to the House of Lords — that it establishes trade unionism as a respectable stakeholder in society.

It should be recalled that there is far more dignity in being elected a leader of the trade union movement than in serving in these decorative, yet essentially bourgeois, roles.