“Actions have consequences,” British Minister of State for Skills and former home secretary Baroness Jacqui Smith said of Palestine Action, the protest group proscribed as a terrorist organisation across the United Kingdom.
She was lecturing the group’s members and supporters, who are legion in Britain, on taking responsibility for their actions. From where everyone else is sitting, she might as well have been talking about her Labour Party colleagues, such as fellow former home secretary Yvette Cooper, who spearheaded the proscription under former prime minister Keir Starmer.
They have made their country a global laughing stock, not just for the proscription itself but for all the consequences that have flowed from it.