Suella Braverman is right for once

There can be few sins in politics graver than giving Suella Braverman a point. Yet that is exactly what the Home Secretary has in her Times op-ed when she writes:

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 Matter demonstrators were enabled, allowed to break rules and even greeted with officers taking the knee?

She’s not wrong, is she? Some progressives are arguing that she is because, they contend, Boris Johnson ‘essentially authorised’ the BLM protests when he said in an 8 June 2020 speech: ‘[T]o all those who have chosen to protest peacefully and who have insisted on social distancing – I say, yes of course I hear you, and I understand.’ That can read as an authorisation if you really want it to, but you might struggle to square it with the next sentence.