Starmer's Crackdown: Dissent Silenced to Defend Israel

Right, so when is a terrorist not a terrorist? Apparently, when they’re dropping bombs on hospitals, flattening refugee camps, or starving entire civilian populations into submission. But toss a tin of red paint onto a military jet in protest—and suddenly, you’re public enemy number one. Welcome to Britain in 2025, where protesting a genocide gets you branded a terrorist, and enabling one gets you a seat at the Cabinet table.
This is the latest chapter in the twisted logic of Keir Starmer’s Labour government, which is now seeking to proscribe the protest group Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation—not for planting bombs or threatening civilians, but for vandalising two planes with red paint at RAF Brize Norton and escaping on e-scooters. Under the Starmer regime, acts of political protest is now being equated with jihadist terror. Meanwhile, the UK continues to train Israeli soldiers, arm Israeli jets, and fly surveillance missions over Gaza for the IDF—all while maintaining our customary stiff upper lip and insisting this is about national security and Israel’s right to defend itself.
The message it seems could not be clearer: protest the slaughter of Palestinians, and you’re a terrorist. Assist the state in committing that slaughter and you're a patriot. But a patriot to who, because its not Britain is it?
Right, so yesterday it came to pass that a few determined activists managed what would seem, in a functioning democracy, to be a striking but symbolic act of political protest: they breached security at RAF Brize Norton, one of the UK’s most heavily guarded military bases, vandalised two aircraft using red paint and crowbars, and escaped on electric scooters—completely undetected it would appear. No one was injured. No lives were endangered. The target was not civilians but symbols of British complicity in an ongoing genocide: military aircraft assisting Israel’s siege and bombardment of Gaza.
Later that day though, news broke that Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper are considering seeking to proscribe Palestine Action, the direct-action protest group behind the incursion, as a terrorist organisation. According to ministers, the activists were not protesters—they were a national security threat. Well if people on scooters armed with paint can break into Brize Norton and get away again, I question the standard of that national security, a literal military installation has for this alone been made a laughing stock of, but far from protecting public safety, this decision exposes something far more sinister: the UK government is attempting to criminalise dissent in defence of genocide, using terror legislation against protesters potentially, to shield a foreign apartheid regime.
This is not just a gross overreach; it is a threat to the very idea of democratic protest in Britain. And it comes at a moment of profound hypocrisy as well, because this news comes just days after the Court of Appeal ruled that anti-protest laws—championed first by Suella Braverman and now aggressively used by Keir Starmer—were unlawfully implemented. Unable to rely on those laws to suppress political opposition, the government is now seemingly turning to something even darker in their determination to outlaw anti Israel protest: lawfare by terror designation, branding human rights activists as extremists for daring to challenge a genocide the UK is widely seen to be complicit in.
Palestine Action is not an underground militia or an armed insurgency. It is a protest group of ordinary people, formed in 2020 with a single, focused goal: to end British complicity in Israel’s settler-colonial violence. Their most frequent targets have been Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms company, which manufactures drones and weapons tested on Palestinians before being sold globally—including from factories operating inside the UK. Elbit has shut down several UK sites due to Palestine Action's successful campaign of disruptive protest.
More recently, the group’s focus has expanded to include UK military sites and logistical hubs directly aiding Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. The incursion into RAF Brize Norton was prompted by Britain’s role in providing spy flights and intelligence support to the Israeli military. Flights originating from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus and British airspace have reportedly delivered surveillance data, they claim to be used in the search for those hostage Israel are not at all trying very hard at all to rescue, but which could also be used to target Palestinian infrastructure and even civilians.
This is not conspiracy theory—the evidence can be tracked in flight plans on the internet, anyone can do it and the UK government has admitted these lights are happening. And yet, the crime that has incited the wrath of Britain’s political class is not the murder of tens of thousands of Palestinians, but a protest involving paint and scooters.
Let us be absolutely clear: no one was hurt during Palestine Action’s protest, nobody ever is. You can criticise their methods, the vandalism they do conduct, but when you’re not being listened to, you can only escalate to gain attention and still, instead of listening, the government seeks to criminalise, because they have no intention of listening. The damage to the aircraft was largely superficial—intended to symbolise the bloodshed their missions facilitate in Gaza. This was not sabotage in the sense of rendering the aircraft permanently inoperable or attempting to detonate explosives. The tools were crowbars and tins of red paint. The message a very simple one: stop ignoring us, stop ignoring the British people and stop helping Israel bomb civilians.
And yet, Starmer and Cooper are now pursuing the gravest possible domestic sanction available: terrorism proscription. Under the Terrorism Act 2000, a group can be proscribed if it is deemed to be “concerned in terrorism”—defined so broadly that the term has been functionally emptied of its original meaning. If Palestine Action is banned, it would become illegal to support, promote, or belong to the group. Offenders could face prison for it. Even sharing their material on social media could be prosecuted.
This fundamentally amounts to a full-scale assault on freedom of speech, association, and assembly—fundamental democratic rights. It signals that the UK government is now prepared to classify non-violent anti-genocide protest as terrorism.
The UK government is actively aiding a state engaged in genocide, but rather than reassess its role, it is targeting those exposing that complicity.
Over 55,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza to date, since Israel’s genocide began, with thousands more injured, starved, or displaced. International bodies including UN agencies and human rights organisations have repeatedly warned that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide. This has been demonstrated plausibly at the International Court of Justice. Hospitals have been bombed. Water and electricity systems have been destroyed. Journalists and aid workers have been deliberately targeted.
Instead of calling this out though, the UK has continued to supply weapons components, including F-35 fighter jet parts used in bombing raids. Conducted surveillance flights providing intelligence for IDF operations. Continues to Train Israeli soldiers at UK bases and continues to meet with and defend Israel diplomatically, even in the face of overwhelming evidence of war crimes.
To protest these atrocities is now, apparently, terrorism. But to facilitate them? That is national security policy it seems.
This attack on protest is not unique to Starmer though. The rot began under the Conservatives, especially during Suella Braverman’s tenure as Home Secretary. It was she who introduced sweeping amendments to the Public Order Act, criminalising “noisy” protests, locking-on, and even organising spontaneous marches. The kicker weas the designation of protest considered more than minor being criminalised – a remit so vague and introduced via backdoor legislation that it was an absolute abuse of the right to protest.
But the real betrayal lies in Starmer’s response. In opposition these measure’s of Braverman’s were opposed, but in power now, rather than oppose this assault on civil liberties, Labour has enthusiastically defended Braverman’s laws, including in court.
Now, the Court of Appeal has ruled that these changes were unlawfully made. In the landmark Liberty v Home Office case, Britain’s most respected civil rights organisation proved that the government bypassed parliamentary process to suppress dissent. The result: dozens of convictions under the unlawful laws are now likely to be quashed.
Liberty celebrated of course:
But rather than learn from this, rather than accepting defeat gracefully, rather than accepting the right to protest, rather than accept the rebuke, Starmer’s government appears to have now shifted tactics just days after this defeat: if protest cannot be criminalised under civil law, lets try and reframe it as terrorism. This is nothing short of totalitarian logic. It is utter authoritarianism and all for Israeli interests, not ours.
That Keir Starmer is serving not British values but Israeli state interests is increasingly impossible to deny though Zionists will try.
Starmer has repeatedly refused to condemn Israeli war crimes, even when footage and UN reports confirm the targeting of children, journalists, and aid workers. His standard response is to affirm “Israel’s right to self-defence”—even in the face of one-sided slaughter.
And now, in seeking to ban Palestine Action, he is going even further: using Britain’s anti-terror laws to silence protest on behalf of a foreign power. There can be no clearer demonstration of whose interests he truly serves.
In his statement following the RAF Brize Norton protest, Starmer said:
‘The act of vandalism committed at RAF Brize Norton is disgraceful. Our Armed Forces represent the very best of Britain and put their lives on the line for us every day. It is our responsibility to support those who defend us.’
But whose values, and whose interests, are served by providing surveillance for the bombing of refugee camps? Or conducting Surveillance flights? Or continuing to supply military hardware?
Palestine Action’s protest was not anti-British—it was anti-complicity. It highlighted that British soldiers are now facilitating war crimes on behalf of Israel, not protecting British citizens or national sovereignty.
To criticise this arrangement is not treason—it is the duty of anyone with a moral compass. And yet, those who speak up are branded extremists, while the state that bombs hospitals and starves civilians is treated as an ally.
Palestine Action threw red paint on two military aircraft. They made a symbolic political statement. They escaped without confrontation. No bombs were set off. No hostages were taken. No civilians were harmed.
And for this, they may now be listed alongside the likes of ISIS and Al-Qaeda.
This is not just absurd—it is terrifying. It reveals that the UK government now sees activism itself as a threat and if they get away with this, they will no doubt go further. It invites a future where any protest movement challenging entrenched power can be dismantled not by public debate, but by brutal repression.
Across the UK, protests in solidarity with Gaza have continued, and they must continue for as long as government complicity remains. Civil liberties groups have condemned the government’s move as a dangerous overreach. Rights lawyers are already reaching out to Palestine Action to assist in fighting this ridiculous stunt Starmer and Cooper are trying to pull and many ordinary people are waking up and must continue to wake up to this sobering truth: that we are now living through the potential criminalisation of having a conscience.
The decision to proscribe Palestine Action is not just a policy dispute. It is a defining moment. It asks us to choose: will Britain be a country that defends human rights, or one that crushes dissent to protect a genocidal foreign regime?
Keir Starmer seems to have made his choice. By branding anti-genocide activists as terrorists, he is sending a clear signal: criticism of Israel will not be tolerated, even if that means destroying the foundations of this democracy at home.
But the story is not yet over. What happens now depends on whether we are willing to speak up—stand up to this draconian nonsense not just for Palestine Action, but for the right to protest itself.
if the government succeeds in criminalising resistance to genocide, then the real terrorists will not be those holding paint cans—but those holding power.
Meanwhile of course, apart from defending Israel’s right to defend itself against its captive population in Gaza, he’s also doing it after israel starting a war with Iran and he’s standing by the dressing up box just waiting for Donald Trump to give him the word so he can go all Iraq War just like his idol Tony Blair it seems. Get all the details of Starmer and his desperation to be a war leader in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch.
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