Kill the Bill!

The more you study what is going on with the Just Stop Oil protests and the Public Order Bill, the more weird and inconsistent our national attitude to protesters seems. Britain, according to those opposed to the Bill, is a police state. If you look at their response to the Just Stop Oil protests, however, we look like pushovers.

It would be easy to come to the conclusion, watching protesters block roads and the police often just stand and watch, that Britain is in desperate need of more laws to deal with this kind of thing: to make it clear that yes, everyone has the right to protest but no, they do not have the right to prevent others from going about their lawful business.

The government has certainly been drawing attention to this aspect of the Bill in recent days. It would criminalise, for example, the act of ‘locking on’ – where protesters use locks in order to make it more difficult for police to remove them.