The police don’t need powers to further curtail our right to protest. Just teach them the law

‘The police have considerable power already to prevent disruption and public nuisance, and there is increasing evidence of it being used.’ Photograph: Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images

John Stuart Mill on liberty is a famous cop-out. Everybody has rights, he said, except the right to harm the interests of others. That exception had to be policed by authority. Welcome to philosophy’s most celebrated can of worms.

The government’s attempt this week to strengthen police powers in England and Wales over disruptive protest is a classic of Mill’s cop-out. It is the result of recent actions taken by Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, not against fossil-fuel companies or their supplies, but against people in general, blocking access to city streets and motorways. The intention has been not to curb carbon emissions – the congestion probably increased them – but to generate publicity and thus headlines in the media.