8 months ago
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Campaigners and MPs have dismissed the prime minister’s claim as hyperbolic, alarmist and illiberal
Dal Babu, a former chief superintendent in the Metropolitan police, told the Today programme this morning that Rishi Sunak’s comments about “mob rule” (see 9.25am) were unhelpful. As HuffPost UK reports, Babu said:
Language is important. I don’t think that kind of language is helpful …
My daughters have been on marches, ordinary people, Jewish people, Muslim people, people of no faith, LGBTQ people, have all been on marches. So this is a wide spectrum of people, so to call these people a mob is not very helpful, particularly when you’re trying to appeal to them to stop marching.
There is a growing consensus that mob rule is replacing democratic rule. And we’ve got to collectively, all of us, change that urgently.
We can make a start today with the new Democratic Policing Protocol …
Talk of ‘mob rule’ wildly exaggerates the issue and risks delegitimising the rights of peaceful protest.
Freedom of expression and assembly are absolutely fundamental rights in any free and fair society. The UK has undergone a major crackdown on protest rights in recent years, with peaceful protest tactics being criminalised and the police being given sweeping powers to prevent protests taking place.
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