So… Labour is losing the plot as well.

Watch out: here comes an opinion.

So, in England, if you wear a keffiyeh, you can be arrested ant taken into custody by the police. Apparently, it has recently been arranged by the UK government that it is okay to do so.

Or, if you’d have worn this

you could have been unceremoniously thrown into a police cell as well.

All because of this:

Key Sections of the Terrorism Act 2000, section 13

Offence of displaying support for a proscribed organization, such as wearing its uniform or displaying its flag

Use case: Wearing clothing that clearly identifies support for a banned terror group.

You have to dig into the issue to find this out that it also applies to Hamas. In total, it would apply to 98 organisations if I’m informed correctly.

Mind you, this could mistakenly be applied to you if you were participating in a peaceful protest waving the Palestinian flag. Or if you were just walking the street with the wrong garment.

Now, anyone who hasn’t been sniffing glue for the last ninety minutes will be able to identify that the Palestinian flag is not Hamas’ flag, nor is it Palestine Action’s flag, and that the keffiyeh, dating back as far as the Ottoman Empire, has been around a bit longer than Hamas, or Palestine Action, for that matter.

But that’s not the issue. My point is, it could easily go like this:
“Your Honour, he was wearing a Palestinian shawl, and the guy next to him was waving a Palestine flag, so we think it was very reasonable to assume they were supporting a terrorist organisation.”
And if I have my facts correct, that’s actually what’s happening. The association with Palestine Action or Hamas will only be investigated after you’ve been thrown into custody, once the legal aspect is coming under review.

As a result, legal experts (even here in The Netherlands) would tend to say “oh, it’s not such a bad law, I mean, in the end it’s up to a court to decide, so you’d be unharmed, right?”

Ehh, no.
In fact, not just no.
Let me phrase this as friendly and politically correct as I can:
That’s bollocks. Poppycock. Sheer utter stupidity.

Allow me a moment to explain why I think so. When you are arrested during a protest by a copper who doesn’t know the difference between Palestina and Hamas and Palestine Action, your problem does not start the moment the magistrate adresses you saying “ooh you naughty boy, you shouldn’t have done that”. Your problem, as a citizen, starts the moment a copper clubs you on the noggin and throws you in the van. And it doesn’t get better from there. Being in police custody is not a walk in the park. In 2024, 24 people in the UK died in pre-trial detention. Luckily, the vast majority doesn’t, but that doesn’t mean they have no problem whatsoever, as is evident by 68 people committing suicide after being released from pre-trial detention (see above article).

And even if all that is not applicable to you, you could probably imagine this is all pretty traumatic.

Funny detail: when Palestine Action was added to the list in 2025, it was added together with two other groups (get this…): Maniacs Murder Cult and the Russian Imperial Movement. The reason for this was that the Home Secretary only offered to add these three groups or reject these three groups as a package, not just add the two mob groups and not add Palestine Action.
It stands to reason to suspect that this was done to make sure Parliament would actually go along with this.

What I think this act does is try to instill fear in the hearts of protesters.

A similar line of thought has been running through the Dutch government as well. There was this idea, sneaked into a larger proposal by Geert Wilders, to make it punishable by law if you would help someone who resides in this country illegally. So if you’d find someone who had his face smashed in and you ran him to hospital, or if you were the ER nurse or surgeon taking care of him, and it would turn out he was here illegally…

“But surely the court would judge you not guilty, right, so what’s the problem?”
Well, the problem is that you, as a citizen, are already in problems once you’ve been accused of breaking that law. And the people who came up with this stupid amendment are hoping that, since you know that, you’re going to think twice.

Luckily, CDA decided that this was ground to vote against the law in its entirety. So that wretched idea went into the sink, and after Wilders blew up the cabinet by pulling out, the proposal has been rewritten to omit that bit.

Do not put a potential penalty on being human.