Starmer's Terrorism Act Hypocrisy Sparks Outrage!

Right, so nothing sums Keir Starmer up quite like a dose of hypocrisy. A man who will say one thing and do another, a man for whom the rules that apply to we mere mortals that don’t apply to him, but in light of the recent abuses of the Public Order Act and the Terrorism Act of 2000, Starmer has surpassed himself with this latest example.
Where journalists have had their homes raided, where activists have been arrested for allegedly supporting a proscribed terror organisation, Starmer has now gone and invited the leader of one such group to the UK, but I suppose given this particular leader happens to be ridiculously pro Israel, we shouldn’t be too surprised he’s doing this.
You see Keir Starmer has extended an invitation to Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa, better known as al-Jolani, the self-appointed, unelected interim president of Syria and of course leader of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, a group that remains on the UK’s official list of proscribed terrorist organisations. When compared to the treatment of Hamas by comparison anti-Israel, pro-Palestine as they are, this political hospitality extended to a known jihadist figure is happening alongside the UK government's support for Israel and by extension its ongoing repression of pro-Palestinian voices, in part through heavy-handed application of the Terrorism Act. If this isn’t political hypocrisy I don’t know what is. We have here the application of selective justice, rooted in ideological bias, foreign policy opportunism, and all amid an alarming erosion of democratic freedoms not just in Palestine, but amongst minorities in Syria who al-Jolani is very repressing.
Starmer appears through his actions to be placing himself above the law, where some on the terrorist list are welcome and others are not and if you’re seen to so much as express an opinion that could be construed as in favour of one side or the other, you might get a knock on the door.
Right, so first and foremost in the name of covering my own backside, disclaimer time, nothing said in this video is meant as an endorsement or support for any group mentioned that is on the UK proscription list, but that isn’t to say we can’t expose such hypocrisy as appears to be on show courtesy of the UK’s deeply unpopular and rapidly becoming ever more so Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
HTS, formerly known as the al-Nusra Front, and before that the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda, might now be considered legitimate by many governments, but they remain on the UK proscribed organisations list and for good reason, its Al-Qaeda for heaven’s sake. Al-Jolani, its leader, has been implicated in multiple terrorist atrocities, both before his rise to power and since, including attacks on Christian, Alawite, and Druze minorities in Syria. The United Nations and human rights groups have documented a litany of abuses by HTS, including kidnappings, extrajudicial killings, and the suppression of civil liberties in areas under its control and its just continued since al-Jolani took over following the fall of Assad last December.
For years, al-Jolani was the subject of a US government bounty, $10m, due to his role in global terrorism. That a man with such a resume of violence and extremism still continuing to this day would be not only welcomed, but invited to visit by a UK Prime Minister is, to say the least, disgusting, not to mention rampantly hypocritical given the arrests and police heavy-handedness involved in pro Gaza and pro Palestine demonstrations and protests.
Starmers invite to al-Jolani comes amid increasing government repression of Palestine solidarity protests in the UK. Since the October 2023 escalation in Gaza, pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been met with mass arrests, bans, and threats of criminal prosecution. The Terrorism Act has been wielded to criminalise speech, expression, and association.
Meanwhile, Hamas, which governs Gaza and also appears on the UK’s proscribed list, is uniformly condemned by Starmer's government, with no distinction made between its political and military wings, which is a very important point when it comes to the context of their deproscription legal case and the attacks on the lawyers representing them.
The inconsistencies becomes even more troubling when considering that Hamas has never carried out an attack on UK soil, unlike al-Qaeda. Few of us who were around at the time will ever forget that al-Qaeda orchestrated the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005, a fact that should weigh heavily on any government's decisions regarding foreign militant groups, especially ones related to them. And yet, here is Keir Starmer, a self-declared "Zionist without qualification," extending a diplomatic olive branch to the leader of a group which has declared hostility to secularism, democracy, and minority rights.
Of course Zionism is probably at the crux of the issue. Al-Jolani is avowedly pro-Israel too, to the extent Israel are still invading his country and he still hasn’t raised a finger to stop it. Reports suggest that he is keen on joining the Abraham Accords now too, the US-brokered normalisation agreements between Israel and several other Arab states, so Israel invade Syria and this guy still wants formal diplomatic ties, but all of this aligns conveniently with Starmerroid foreign policy priorities – terror designation be damned in light of that it seems. The United Arab Emirates is reportedly now acting as an intermediary in a settlement deal between al-Jolani’s Syria and Israel. Al-Jolani's desire to integrate into western and Israeli normality is all it takes it seems for him to become a convenient ally for the UK, despite his bloody past and the designation of the group he leads.
More importantly, it suggests that for Starmer and his government, ideological alignment with Zionism and Western strategic interests excuses even the most heinous and barbaric of crimes, again throwing Starmer’s lack of ethics or morals into light. If this is what he think passes for diplomacy, then he’s a worse politician than I already though, because this is just the abandonment of critique for the sake of pro Israeli interests.
The hypocrisy of the situation of course comes when we compare this with the UK government’s approach to Hamas. In 2021, the then-Home Secretary Priti Patel proscribed the entirety of Hamas, collapsing the previously acknowledged division between a military wing and a political wing. Where the military wing has been proscribed for some 25 years now, the political wing was only proscribed in 2021 and that of course cuts off the ability to have any diplomatic ties. Patel made sure this couldn’t be reversed either by proscribing both military and political wings in one lump, no differentiation between the two exists anymore. As a result this has criminalised many forms of support for Palestinian self-determination. Lawyers representing Hamas in a current court case to challenge their proscription have been vilified in the media and the media have got away with it, because of Patel. The lawyers have to fight to deproscribe both the pollical and military wings of Hamas, giving the media the ammunition they need to attack them. The Labour government, with Starmer at the helm, himself a former human rights lawyer apparently, has made no effort to defend the principle that everyone deserves legal representation, which is true and as much as he’s apparently abusing the Terrorism Act, it is a provision within that same act that allows Hamas to mount this legal challenge. Yet despite the law being clear on this, defending a proscribed organisation in court as is their right, is being painted as a threat to national security.
It's not like we don’t have plenty of examples to choose from when it comes to establishment heavy handedness is it? The Met police banning protest by Jewish protesters outside the Israeli ambassador’s residence, the shocking case of the Met police raiding a Quaker meeting house as well, where climate change and Gaza were being discussed by people snacking on breadsticks and houmous, not to mention those singled out at pro-Palestine protests which already suffer from authoritarian restrictions. This heavy-handed policing doesn’t happen towards those defending Israel and Zionist atrocity though does it?
Al-Jolani’s invitation becomes even more damning when placed against recent moves by the UK government as well. It was only last month that the UK lifted several sanctions on Syria, an act which obviously benefitted al-Jolani’s mandateless administration. While the rationale provided was to ease humanitarian access, the de facto result was empowering a region ruled by a man considered a terrorist by UK law, all at the same time that al-Jolani, HTS outfit was conducting raids and targeting Alawite civilians in central and northern Syria—as documented by international human rights monitors. As that was happening Starmer's government was easing economic restrictions to Syria. If they’re ont the proscribed list you can’t have one group bad, another group good. By law they have to be regarded equally and clearly that isn’t happening.
Exposing Starmer’s hypocrisy and wrong-footedness all the more, is the fact tht an Iraqi Member of Parliament has filed a lawsuit against al-Jolani for his past terrorist acts, asserting that his impunity emboldens others who would seek power through violence, but you won’t have heard a dickie bird about this if you’ve heard about Starmer’s invite, so here’s an excerpt from The Cradle to explain:
‘Iraqi Member of Parliament Alaa al-Haidari has filed a lawsuit with the Iraqi Public Prosecution against the new Syrian President, Ahmad al-Sharaa, Shafaq News reported on 29 April.
In a video statement from the Supreme Judicial Council building, Haidari said, “I filed the complaint against the terrorist Julani, known as Ahmad al-Sharaa,” who “was part of ISIS organizations in Iraqi territory.”
This comes as the Syrian President received an official invitation from Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani on 27 April to attend the Arab League Summit scheduled to be held next month in the capital, Baghdad.’
Fat chance of a UK MP doing likewise here eh?
At the same time all of this is happening of course, legal teams in the UK fighting for the deproscription of Hamas face vilification for doing their job. Everyone is entitled to legal representation, their cause treated not as a legal question but as a national threat instead and given lawyers have lost their lives previously for challenging the state on legal matters.
Starmer’s meeting with al-Jolani is being framed as a political engagement. And yet, he uses the proscription of Hamas to justify not meeting the political representatives of Gaza’s elected government, at least they got voted in which is more than al-Jolani has been. This double standard places Starmer, in effect, above the very Terrorism Act his government invokes to suppress dissent. The law’s vague language has allowed it to be used as a political bludgeon, chilling free speech and protest under the pretext of national security. And while political meetings are allowed under the Act even with members of proscribed groups, this exception is clearly being weaponised selectively.
So the message Starmer is sending here very is clear: if a group aligns with UK and Israeli interests, their crimes can be overlooked. If they challenge the prevailing order or advocate for Palestinian rights, they are to be branded enemies of the state. That is the double standard here is not not?
In the background of all this is an even darker implication regarding the erosion of democratic norms. When lawyers are attacked for representing unpopular clients lets put it, when political protest is criminalised, and when known terrorists are welcomed because they serve political convenience, the rule of law itself falls apart. History offers dire warnings about what happens when legal and moral principles are undermined by ideology.
This is not just a chronic lapse in political judgment, by a political pygmy of a Prime Minister; it is a dangerous precedent that undermines the credibility of the UK's counterterrorism policy, delegitimises its stance on human rights, and erodes the public's trust in the integrity of its political leadership.
The invitation extended to Muhammad al-Jolani by Keir Starmer is an absolute scandal that encapsulates the contradictions of a government willing to vilify Palestinian voices while legitimising those with blood on their hands—and that’s not to say Hamas don’t, they do – but provided they align with Western and Zionist interests exceptions evidently get made. This moment demands scrutiny, protest, and above all else accountability. This story is not being well covered at all at this point, it really needs to be. Meanwhile, for more on that story of Jewish protesters being banned from protesting outside of the official residence of Israel’s ambassador to the UK, the Zionist cheerleader that is Tzipi Hotovely, in another example of the double standard at play here, check out this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch. Please do also hit like, share and subscribe if you haven’t done so already, so as to ensure you don’t miss out on all new daily content as well as supporting the channel at the same time, which is very much appreciated, holding power to account for ordinary working class people and I will hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.