Britain’s latest descent into authoritarianism fits a depressingly familiar pattern. This is how it tends to work: a subversive group is identified by political elites and presented as a danger to the nation, often being additionally labelled as allies or dupes of hostile foreign enemies. An air of national emergency is contrived, with exaggerated, distorted, or simply invented evidence used to justify claims of an imminent threat. The ensuing repressive measures are supposedly to defend the security of both individual citizens and the nation alike.

This is what was really going on when Rishi Sunak spoke of “mob rule” and warned of the “forces here at home trying to tear us apart” during his sinister prime ministerial address last Friday. It should be seen, too, as the rationale behind proposals by rightwing former Labour MP John Woodcock – appointed by the Tories as a peer, Lord Walney, and advisor on political violence after he endorsed Boris Johnson in the last election – to ban politicians from engaging with movements protesting against mass slaughter in Gaza or the climate emergency.

The government knows there tend to be fewer arrests at demonstrations against Israel’s onslaught than at last year’s Glastonbury music festival. This is despite an array of anti-protest laws so draconian they have been condemned by the United Nations’ human rights chief. But these manoeuvres aren’t about a genuine fear of actual threats. Rather, they are simply an expression of a basic human truth: the powerful do not like........

© The Guardian