‘TOTALITARIAN’ STATE
PARLIAMENT may have decided MPs can only gush about the royals but that shouldn’t stop the rest of us expressing our opinion.
So it’s outrageous that the Met Police arrested peaceful and, I believe, lawful protesters at the Coronation.
MPs across the political spectrum are up in arms and it isn’t a good look that King Charles the Unwanted gave the cops new powers by giving royal assent to a dangerous Public Order Act only a few days before his crowning.
Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle, a dyed-in-the-wool monarchist, may face calls for an emergency statement from a Government minister, what’s termed an Urgent Question, unless party whips silence backbenchers.
Thai-style justice – with mocking the King imprisonable in the Asian kingdom – would destroy free speech in Britain. A warning from Northumbria’s former top copper Sue Sim that “draconian” new powers risk a “totalitarian police state” sets alarm bells ringing.
Moscow and Beijing will bring up London’s crackdown next time the Foreign Office condemns oppression in those countries.
» THERE’S a reason buoyant Lib Dem Ed Davey rules out another Tory coalition then claims it’s a “hypothetical question” when asked about Labour. The former Energy Secretary in the dreadful ConDem government now depends on Labour tactical votes. Tory MPs sit in 18 of 20 Lib Dem top targets and the SNP hold one of the remaining two. Sheffield Hallam is the sole Labour constituency on the list. Naked opportunism?
» I’M no fan of Rishi Sunak, as you know, but he’s a far better man than nasty, reactionary and – after whining his smear was “wilfully misconstrued” – cowardly historian David Starkey. The odious Starkers asserting the PM hadn’t engaged with the Coronation because he’s “not fully grounded in our culture” was, as former chancellor Sajid Javid has said in the past about Starkey abuse, racist.