Andy Burnham’s government is punishing ordinary people more than criminals, warns Tim Newark (Image: Getty)
Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick believes there is a two-tier justice when determining how the courts treat anti-migrant protesters compared to illegal migrant criminals themselves. And it is hard to disagree. Del Somerville, 42, was sentenced this month to two years in jail for throwing a plastic bottle at police and behaving aggressively during an anti-migrant demonstration in Portsmouth.
Compare that to asylum seeker Tadi Alemeyeha, 23, who received just 18 months for sexually assaulting a woman in Manchester, and Muqbil Al Dhaheri, 36, who sexually assaulted a nurse in Chelmsford but was spared prison altogether.
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In a post on X, Mr Jenrick wrote: “Why is the British state punishing protesters harder than illegal migrants who break into our county and commit appalling crimes? Why do judges apply the principle of deterrence to sentencing protesters, and not to the illegal migrants who are terrorising women and girls across our country?”
I know the answer – our Labour government, and a left-leaning judiciary, is determined to intimidate protestors into submission. When hardened criminals are being released early from jail, it makes no sense to use prison places for people who are simply protesting against out of control immigration. That protestors are frequently held on remand for months is another abuse of our justice system.
The state is abusing the law by delivering heavy sentences on Britons whose are objecting to boat loads of illegal migrants landing on our beaches. Dubbed “thugs”, many of these protestors are ordinary family folk worried sick about the safety of their loved ones and the future of the country.
Even masked protestors at Dover and Portsmouth are no more guilty than militant masked Antifa activists in London’s East End who seem to enjoy immunity from mainstream media criticism. One Left-wing newspaper editor compared them to “Black shirts” or “Brown shirts”, making the lazy comparison with Nazis.
Most notorious of all was the sentence of 31 months given to Lucy Connolly for an inflammatory tweet following the horrendous Southport murders. Anger at what now turns out to have been a state failure in monitoring a disturbed young man should not be unsurprising and should certainly not deserve incarceration.
Connolly was not a threat to the wider public, but the government clearly wanted to intimidate anyone expressing support for the subsequent protests.
We can never condone violence, especially against the police, but when hardened criminals get lesser sentences than normally law-abiding citizens something is wrong. This Labour government fears legitimate anger at its inability to control illegal migration and is using every weapon it can to silence mainstream concern.
Ministers don’t like anyone who successfully challenges their ineptitude at protecting our frontiers. Look at the way the political establishment demonises Nigel Farage and is going after him with any and every supposed infringement. As Mr Jenrick added: “This is why the British state has a legitimacy crisis. It exerts far more effort suppressing people’s concerns about immigration than actually fixing it. Reform will ensure the British government actually serves the British people again.”
Labour needs to urgently address the issues that are provoking ordinary people into standing up against a corrupt and two-tier immigration system that favours illegal migrants over patriotic Britons.
Otherwise the growing sense of unfairness will only make the situation worse.
Labour Stamps on Protests Like Fascists – This Is the Path to Totalitarianism
Britain’s long-running argument over the right to protest has entered another contentious phase, with critics of the Labour government accusing ministers of pushing public-order restrictions too far.
The language surrounding the debate has become increasingly heated. Some opponents have described the government’s approach as authoritarian or even compared it with fascism, warning that repeated restrictions on demonstrations could weaken one of the fundamental freedoms of a democratic society.
Those are political judgments rather than established descriptions of the government’s system of rule. Nevertheless, the underlying question is serious: how far should the state be able to restrict protest in order to protect public safety, prevent serious disruption and safeguard the rights of other citizens?
Recent changes to Britain’s protest laws provide plenty of material for that debate.
Britain still protects peaceful protest
The starting point is important.
Freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly are protected in Britain through Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, incorporated into UK law.
The rights are not absolute. Parliament has also established circumstances in which police can impose restrictions on demonstrations, particularly where there are concerns about public disorder, serious disruption or the rights of other people.
The House of Commons Library notes that Britain’s protest laws have undergone substantial changes in recent years, including reforms under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, the Public Order Act 2023 and the Crime and Policing Act 2026.
That history matters because the current controversy did not begin with a single Labour announcement.
Instead, Britain’s legal framework has developed through several pieces of legislation, introduced in response to different forms of protest and public-order concerns.
New powers under the 2026 law
The Crime and Policing Act 2026 has expanded the powers available to police.
Among the new offences are rules concerning concealing identity at certain protests, climbing on specified war memorials and possessing pyrotechnics at protests.
The government says these measures are intended to deal with disruptive or dangerous tactics while preserving the right to peaceful protest. Its official guidance says police need additional powers to address behaviour involving flares and fireworks, climbing on memorials and people concealing their identities to avoid criminal liability.
The new face-covering offence is particularly controversial.
Under the legislation, police can designate an area where they reasonably believe a protest may take place and that criminal activity is likely to occur or has occurred. The designation can last for up to 48 hours.
The offence does not apply to people covering their faces for health, religious or work-related reasons.
Supporters argue that such measures target individuals attempting to commit offences while hiding their identities.
Critics, however, question how broadly these powers could eventually be used and whether people who have committed no offence should face police intervention simply because they are attending a demonstration in a designated area.
That is the central civil-liberties concern.
The Palestine Action protests
The argument became particularly visible during the Labour Party conference in Liverpool.
A pro-Palestine demonstration outside the conference resulted in more than 160 people being arrested or reported for summons, according to reporting based on information from Merseyside police.
Police said 82 people were detained on suspicion of supporting a proscribed organisation, while 79 others were reported for summons. The protest involved banners supporting Palestine Action, which has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation.
The arrests prompted fierce criticism from campaigners.
The protest organisers argued that the demonstrations represented political opposition to the government’s position and accused ministers of failing to respect freedom of expression.
Police, meanwhile, said they respected lawful protest while maintaining that criminal offences would be dealt with.
This distinction is essential to understanding the dispute.
A government can support the right to peaceful protest while also enforcing laws against specific conduct. The difficult question is whether those laws are being applied proportionately and whether they sufficiently distinguish political expression from criminal activity.
Angela Rayner and the question of intimidating protests
The government has also drawn a distinction between peaceful political demonstrations and protests it considers threatening or intimidating.
Angela Rayner recently argued that certain far-right marches should not be allowed where they create fear among local residents.
She criticised demonstrations involving masked participants and aggressive behaviour, saying legitimate protest should not be confused with activity designed to intimidate communities.
Her comments illustrate the government’s broader argument: protest is a democratic right, but it does not automatically protect every method used during a demonstration.
That principle is not unique to Labour.
British governments of different political parties have historically imposed restrictions when protests cause serious disruption, threaten public safety or involve criminal conduct.
The current disagreement is therefore partly about where the boundary should be drawn.
When does regulation become excessive?
This is where the strongest civil-liberties arguments emerge.
The House of Commons Library notes that recent reforms have increased police powers, created new protest-related offences and expanded penalties for disruptive activity.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights has expressed concern about the frequency of legislative changes affecting protest.
Its scrutiny of the Crime and Policing Act highlighted the importance of freedom of expression and peaceful assembly to democracy and questioned whether repeated changes to protest legislation were becoming excessive.
The government’s response is that the reforms are necessary because protest tactics have evolved.
That creates a genuine policy disagreement rather than a simple argument between people who support democracy and people who oppose it.
One side places greater emphasis on preventing disruption and protecting the public.
The other places greater emphasis on preventing the state from acquiring increasingly broad powers over political demonstrations.
Both concerns are recognised within Britain’s constitutional framework.
The danger of political labels
The headline claim that Labour is behaving “like fascists” is rhetorically powerful, but it requires careful treatment.
Fascism has a specific historical and political meaning. It is associated with authoritarian political movements that reject liberal democratic pluralism and have historically involved the suppression of political opposition, independent institutions and civil liberties.
The existence of restrictions on protests does not, by itself, establish that a government is fascist.
Similarly, describing a particular law as a step towards “totalitarianism” is an argument about where a policy could lead, not evidence that Britain has become a totalitarian state.
Those distinctions matter because political debate becomes less informative when every controversial restriction is automatically equated with dictatorship.
At the same time, the opposite mistake would be to dismiss concerns about civil liberties simply because the language used by critics is exaggerated.
Democratic freedoms can be weakened gradually, and scrutiny of government powers is a normal part of a functioning democracy.
Repeated protests and cumulative disruption
Another important development is the government’s treatment of repeated demonstrations.
Under the Crime and Policing Act 2026, police must consider the cumulative impact of repeated protests when assessing serious disruption to the life of a community.
This can allow conditions to be imposed on the timing or route of recurring protests.
The government argues that this is necessary because a series of individually manageable demonstrations can collectively create substantial disruption for residents, businesses and visitors.
Critics can reasonably ask whether this approach risks penalising campaigns precisely because they are persistent.
Repeated protest is often a feature of political movements. A campaign may need weeks or months of demonstrations before its message receives serious attention.
The challenge for lawmakers is therefore to distinguish persistent democratic campaigning from unacceptable disruption.
Britain’s democratic test
Britain’s protest debate is unlikely to disappear.
The government has established an independent review of public-order and hate-crime legislation, chaired by Lord Macdonald, a former Director of Public Prosecutions. The review examined whether existing laws remain fit for purpose and whether legal thresholds and safeguards are appropriate.
That review provides an opportunity to examine the competing arguments using evidence rather than political slogans.
The essential question is not whether every protest should be allowed to continue regardless of its consequences.
Nor is it whether the government should have unlimited authority to control demonstrations.
The democratic challenge is finding a workable boundary between peaceful political expression and conduct that genuinely threatens public safety or seriously interferes with the rights of others.
The argument is bigger than Labour
The controversy surrounding Labour’s approach also illustrates a broader problem in British politics.
Public-order legislation can survive changes of government. Powers created by one administration may later be used by another against entirely different political movements.
That is why civil-liberties safeguards matter even when a person agrees with the government’s immediate objective.
A protester who supports one cause today may oppose another cause tomorrow. A government that creates new powers to deal with demonstrations it dislikes cannot guarantee that those powers will never be used in circumstances its supporters find uncomfortable.
For that reason, the debate over protest should not simply be reduced to Labour versus its opponents.
It concerns the relationship between citizens and the state.
Britain’s current laws clearly give police greater powers to intervene in certain protests than they had several years ago. The government says those powers are necessary to protect the public and prevent serious disruption. Parliament’s human-rights scrutiny has raised concerns about the volume of legislative change and the importance of maintaining effective safeguards.
Whether the balance is correct remains a matter for democratic and legal scrutiny.
Calling the government fascist does not settle that question.
Neither does insisting that every restriction is automatically justified.
The real test is whether Britain can maintain the practical ability to protest, criticise governments and organise politically while also protecting citizens from violence, intimidation and serious disruption.
That balance is difficult.
But precisely because protest is fundamental to democratic politics, it is a balance that deserves sustained scrutiny.