cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/25749999
LONDON (AP) — Britain’s High Court ruled Friday that the government’s decision to outlaw the protest group Palestine Action as a terrorist organization was unlawful, but it kept the ban in place pending an appeal.
Well that was obvious from the start. By all means arrest people who commit crimes but calling those crimes terrorism was insanely stupid.
It wasn’t even done any particularly sinister reason, it was just them being dumb. Terrorism charges obviously carries longer prison sentences, but that in no way benefited the government, so there was no reason for them to do that. They just came off looking bad at a time when they really needed their public image to improve. I’ve said this before but it bears repeating because every time a story like this comes out it makes labour look like the US republicans but they’re not. They’re just really really really really stupid.
Starmer used to be a human rights lawyer, so I don’t understand how he’s so bad at his job.
Starmer got his PM job after a coordinated campaign by the rightwing press and Labour rightwingers to falsely claim that Jeremy Corbyn and his shadow government were antisemitic. As a consequence, Starmer is now hypersensitive to the damaging effects that a such claim of antisemitism could do to him, whether true or not. And policies that are not in open support of Likud’s genocide are at risk of such claims.
TL;DR-- he’s maneuvered himself into a position where he’s in Netanyahu’s pocket. And he’s a coward.