The #PoliceBill is not directed against violent protests. It has no impact on them. It aims to suppress peaceful protest. It is an attack on our rights and liberty. It is not the act of a democratic government. It is the act of a Putinist regime.
The #PoliceBill is not the act of any legitimate democratic government. It drives a bulldozer through the right to protest which is a constitutional cornerstone of any democracy. And the UK is only a democracy by dint of unwritten constitutional conventions and norms.
With a compliant Commons majority the PM has the power of an absolute monarch. In the UK the power of the monarch was not curbed by a constitution, instead it was transfered to the monarch's proxy - the PM.
Whereas Parliament often stood as a barrier to monarchical power, the PM usually controls it. What we have in effect is an elected absolute monarchy. So what ensures that this country remains a democracy?
The UK is only a democracy, firstly by dint of conventions and norms which are respected by governments and politicians, secondly by fear of how the opposition might use oppressive laws if it came to power and thirdly by fear of violent insurrection.
The Tories are shredding many of the conventions and norms that make the UK a democracy. The Police Bill is just such an attack on one of those conventions. It is therefore an attack on the UK's constitution as a democracy. And therefore it must be regarded as unconstitutional.
If we break the law by staging or inciting noisy protests, we must be clear that we are asserting our constitutional rights and that it is the government that has violated the constitution and has therefore acted illegally.
What all this shows is that the Brexit Tories are entirely willing to drive a bulldozer through the conventions and norms that make the UK a democracy, and that we are now, sadly to my mind, faced with the urgent need for a written democratic constitution.
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