OPINION - So-called 'protestors' who try to intimidate MPs are the arsonists of our democracy

London Rally Calls For Ceasefire In Palestine As MPs Consider Motion On Gaza

I can only imagine Vladimir Putin’s laughter in Moscow. Last week, Ben Jamal, director of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, told protesters at Westminster he wanted a situation where “they will have to lock the doors of parliament itself”. Three MPs — all women, naturally — have been given police protection. MPs’ offices are surrounded and graffitied. The far-Right white nationalist Tommy Robinson will be allowed to visit London from May. He is threatening riots.

The Home Secretary must deal with this now because this is how liberal democracies fall. I have no idea if Jamal has read the history of the Weimar Republic, or understands it if he did, and I know Robinson hasn’t. Democracies fall when no one defends their processes. We cannot allow the physical intimidation of elected politicians. It is a line that must not be crossed.

Jamal will say I write this because I am a liberal Zionist, and he is an anti-Zionist. Nonsense. I’d say the same to a Zionist who wanted to disrupt parliament: no quarter for any extremists. Jamal still hasn’t explained why, if the march was peaceful in intent, it should be necessary for parliament to be locked down. Perhaps he thinks all parliamentarians are hysterics. It didn’t look that way.

We cannot allow the physical intimidation of elected politicians — it is a line that must not be crossed

I have always said that the marches should happen. Protest gilds a democracy — protest is essential. But here’s the second part which they do not understand, or care for: when it seeks to replace, or undermine, that democracy, it becomes something else. If you don’t understand the difference between stating your case and intimidating others who disagree — and Jamal was over that line last week, seeking to emulate events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, which presumably he objected to, because the rioters were Trumpists — you are either completely credulous or you are lying.

This isn’t about the cause, though they say it is. They say that to prevent a genocide — I’d argue it isn’t a genocide, but that’s for another piece — any action is excusable, which is why pro-Palestine protesters (I’d also argue they aren’t particularly pro-Palestine either) are terrifying children with special needs in coffee shops and preening about it, and chasing female MPs down streets, and filming as they flee. I can only think of the famous exchange in the play A Man for All Seasons, when Thomas More asks William Roper if he would cut down every law to find the Devil. Roper says he would, and More replies: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?”

Resistance by any means necessary, say the placards on the marches, including the torture and murder of children in front of their parents. I wonder if they mean it. I wonder if, on seeing it, they would vomit. Who knows? This conflict invites cosplay, and profound — sometimes completely bogus — emotional investment. (“Israel is like my boyfriend”, read one placard I found in Trafalgar Square). We are all Palestinians, they call, while screaming over moderate Palestinians who have greater cause to hate Hamas than anyone. I think they are in it for the anaesthetic of projection and the purity of hatred. Do they understand their own country?

One Leftist posted a photograph on X of Moscow police arresting people laying flowers for Alexei Navalny. How far are we from this in Britain, she asked. Communist East Germany was better than modern Britain, said another. The Home Secretary can’t fix the schools, it is true, but he can prevent fools trying to lock down parliament because they don’t know the difference between a liberal democracy and a tyranny and, worse, they don’t seem to care.

Nor it is about ethnicity or religion, though they say it is. Two MPs have been murdered since 2016 — Jo Cox in Yorkshire by a white nationalist, and David Amess in Essex by an IS sympathiser. These murderers have more in common than they would like to admit. I fantasise that they could share a cell, as in a sitcom.

We can begin with prison sentences for those who physically intimidate MPs. But how, they will ask, can they hear the people sing? I’m aware that writing a letter to an MP doesn’t give the same narcotic joy as screaming at people who you know, or want, to be afraid of you. But a campaign of letter writing did for Boris Johnson. They must be comforted by that.

Tanya Gold is an Evening Standard columnist

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