The government cannot step outside the law to do whatever it wants. This should not be a controversial statement, but in recent years it has become increasingly important to remind the current UK government of this fact. Today, the high court did exactly that, ruling that anti-protest legislation Suella Braverman brought in as home secretary last year was unlawful and undemocratic, and must now be scrapped.
This is a huge victory for our rights. The law in question gave the police almost unlimited powers to crack down on any protest it deemed as causing “more than minor” disturbance. This is an incredibly broad and deliberately vague definition, and unsurprisingly dragged whole swaths of protesters into the criminal justice system. Hundreds of people, including Greta Thunberg, have already been arrested under this unlawful legislation – as well as several other laws introduced in recent years – including more than 600 people last November alone.
