Weak Met has fuelled this Armistice unrest

SOFT-touch policing may have its place but there are times when this approach creates far more problems than it solves.

Scotland Yard is finding this out to its cost over its pathetically submissive handling of the seemingly endless pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Every weekend since Hamas terrorists murdered more Jews in a single day than at any time since the Holocaust, Met officers have stood idly by and allowed hate-filled, anti-Semitic thuggery to go unpunished.

Emboldened by this feebleness, the protesters now plan to march through London on Armistice Day. This raises the risk that they will disrupt people wanting to observe a respectful silence for those who died to preserve our freedoms.

Fearing they would target the Cenotaph, Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has been reduced to pleading with the organisers to postpone the inflammatory march. Humiliatingly for him, they refused.

Has the UK’s biggest police force ever looked so weak? By failing to clamp down on criminal activity during the marches, senior officers have encouraged Islamist extremists to flex their muscles.

So it’s easy to understand why the far-Right English Defence League is getting in on the act, with its odious founder Tommy Robinson whipping up a counterdemonstration on social media.

A ghastly alliance of football hooligans is threatening to ‘defend the Cenotaph’ from being violated by pro-Palestinian yobs. Now white supremacists are involved, the Met is keeping in mind banning both demos.

The truth is, if the police had taken a much firmer line from the start against those preaching violence and racial hatred, this potentially explosive confrontation might have been averted.

On November 11, we remember the courage and sacrifice of our greatest generations. The fascistic bully-boys – on both sides of the demonstration – are exactly the kind of contemptible dregs they fought to protect us from.