Keir Starmer vs a 76-Year-Old Woman – And He Still Loses

Right, so in Britain under the authoritarianism of Keir Starmer in Number 10 and Yvette Cooper in the Home Office the world has been turned upside down. Smashing up an arms factory to stop a genocide now makes you a terrorist, but hurling bottles at asylum seekers earns you little more than a polite police warning. If that sounds absurd, that’s because it is. Keir Starmer’s Labour—once the party that stood with dockers at Cable Street and cheered on anti-apartheid campaigners—is now the party that treats a 76-year-old anti-genocide activist in Liverpool as a greater threat than far-right thugs terrorising refugees in Epping. Audrey White, who spent her life fighting racism and injustice, is shoved to the ground by police for daring to hold a placard, while fascists are left largely unbothered by law enforcement. And if Yvette Cooper gets her way, even thinking about disrupting injustice—merely planning a protest as that could be in effect, given the abuse of the Terrorism Act—could soon land you in prison.
This is not law and order; this is political policing dressed up as security. Britain is drifting into an era where dissent is no longer a democratic right but a crime to be stamped out, when the government sees fit, in this case criminalising Palestine activism, whilst giving the fash a free pass as we’ve seen in just the last few days. What does it say about the state of our democracy when the people being silenced are those who have spent their lives fighting for it?
Right, so the proscription of Palestine Action under terrorism legislation, the appalling police assault on 76-year-old anti-apartheid veteran Audrey White, the soft handling of fascist rioters in Epping, and Cooper’s proposed new offence criminalising the “planning” of attacks—even when no ideological motive exists—all signal an even more chilling, still happening downwards spiral into clamping down further on our civil and human rights. This is not about public safety; it is about political control. When Palestine protests see police violence erupt, yet fascists threatening asylum seekers are treated with kid gloves, this is a direct reflection of the government itself and for those referring to the Starmer regime as fascist already, well the boot is increasingly being seen to fit isn’t it? It marks a decisive break from Labour’s historic identity as a party of protest and anti-fascism, replacing solidarity with suppression.
The decision to proscribe Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act 2000 is perhaps the clearest example of the state’s growing willingness to treat civil disobedience as terrorism. Palestine Action, a direct-action network targeting UK arms manufacturers supplying Israel, has engaged in property damage, sabotage, and factory occupations. Historically, such actions—like anti-apartheid activists disrupting arms shipments to South Africa—were considered legitimate moral protest. Today, they are rebranded as terrorism.
On 4 July, the High Court rejected Palestine Action’s urgent bid to suspend the ban, allowing the proscription to take effect the following day, as reported by Al Jazeera. The ruling criminalised not just the group’s activities but any public show of support, making it an offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison to wear its logo, chant its name, or share solidarity online.
However, as Nation Cymru confirmed, the court has since agreed to hear a full judicial review, with lawyers arguing that Yvette Cooper’s move violates fundamental rights to free expression and assembly. The case, as covered in Skwawkbox, will test whether the government has stretched the Terrorism Act beyond recognition by conflating direct-action protest with politically motivated violence.
The ban has provoked significant backlash. Trade union leaders and legal scholars have condemned the move in open letters, warning it threatens “fundamental civil liberties and sets a dangerous precedent for democratic protest.” AP News and Reuters documented mass arrests at solidarity demonstrations—over 100 people detained across the UK, many for nothing more than holding placards or wearing Palestine Action T-shirts.
The timing of the proscription betrayed its political nature though. The decision followed Palestine Action’s sabotage of aircraft at RAF Brize Norton, with paint, which disrupted arms supplies to Israel, but didn’t harm any lives. By acting swiftly, Cooper reassured both the arms industry and Britain’s pro-Israel lobby, signalling that any challenge to the UK’s complicity in Israel’s war on Gaza would be crushed.
This is, as I said in another video the other day, not about public order; it is about power. By criminalising a protest group under terrorism laws, Labour has sent a clear message: activism that targets powerful interests will be treated as a security threat, not a democratic right.
If Palestine Action represents the criminalisation of movements, Audrey White embodies the state’s willingness to target individuals who dare to dissent.
White’s history is a reminder of Labour’s lost soul. A lifelong trade unionist and anti-apartheid activist, she famously confronted Starmer at Liverpool’s Spine Building in 2022, accusing him of purging socialists and smearing Jeremy Corbyn. Her message was one of betraying the working class, and Labour values as Starmer’s security pushed her aside, he could barely look her I the eye.
Shortly after, as WSWS and the Morning Star reported, Labour expelled her, citing her interview with Socialist Appeal, a group Starmer had also proscribed as banned to Labour Party members to engage with, al part of his war on the left, as grounds for expulsion. This was already seen as vindictive and authoritarian—punishing a veteran activist for publicly criticising the leader, Starmer running scared of pensioners.
Now, three years later, White’s warnings seem positively prophetic. Shocking footage has come out of police violently manhandling Audrey White this past weekend at a pro-Palestine demonstration. At 76, holding a placard denouncing genocide in Gaza, she was grabbed, shoved, and carried away as though she were a violent criminal. The video sparked outrage across social media, it has become a symbol of Britain’s authoritarian turn and its somewhat ironic that the woman who had Starmer hide behind security three years ago, is the one who has become the face of everything she warned about.
The reaction has been explosive. Trade union branches and pro-Palestine groups have rallied around White, while social media users have flooded platforms with the footage, or stills, drawing sharp contrasts between her peaceful protest and the government’s harsh response.
Her story connects the dots: expelled for dissenting against Starmer, brutalised under his government for protesting genocide. She has become a living embodiment of the argument that Labour is no longer a party of protest but a party of repression.
The government’s authoritarianism is not just about cracking down on the left; it is also about who is allowed to act with impunity. Nowhere has this been clearer – also this past week - than in Epping.
The protests at the Bell Hotel began after the arrest of an asylum seeker on charges of sexual assault, but quickly descended into far-right rioting as the fash sensed an opportunity here to exercise their racist wanton desires. A protest against the asylum seekers was organised, but it was later that violent clashes began, with police officers injured, bottles and eggs thrown, and vehicles attacked. Riot shields and dispersal orders were deployed, as the fash attempted to reach a small counter demonstration speaking up for the right to asylum.
Despite the scale of the violence, only a handful of arrests were made though.
This is a stark contrast to the mass arrests and heavy-handed policing at Palestine solidarity protests, where peaceful demonstrators have been kettled, dragged away, and detained in their hundreds, Audrey White now the face of such aggression, she has since been released on bail, but has been banned from mentioning anything about Palestine, and barred from Liverpool City Centre for 3 months. All for exercising her right to protest.
The optics are devastating. By allowing far-right mobs to intimidate asylum seekers with relative impunity – their protest allowed to happen - while aggressively targeting anti-genocide activists, the government is coming across as tacitly legitimising fascist violence, but then Starmer is all about stopping the boats and clamping down on people being able to claim asylum here. This reflects his political priorities. Protest against genocide is treated as a threat to the state; protest against refugees is tolerated, because both stances align with Starmer’s views.
This is a dangerous slide towards a political environment where far-right intimidation is normalised, and anti-fascist activism is criminalised.
Yvette Cooper’s latest legislative proposal on top of thos though, threatens to formalise “pre-crime” policing now, making it possible to criminalise people for intentions rather than actions.
You see, Cooper now plans to create a new offence covering the planning of “mass casualty attacks” where no ideological motive exists. It is framed as closing a “gap” exposed by the Southport knife attack, where a violent lone actor could not be detained pre-emptively because terrorism laws only apply to ideological threats.
Under this new offence, police will gain powers to arrest individuals for preparatory actions—buying materials, researching targets, or even discussing plans. While this may sound reasonable on paper, it opens the door to criminalising activism: climate activists planning infrastructure disruption, Palestine solidarity campaigners organising factory occupations, or even striking dockworkers planning blockades could fall under this broad category. The planning itself becomes the crime.
Similar “domestic extremism” frameworks have been used in France to detain climate activists pre-emptively and in Germany to ban BDS movements. Critics argue it represents a shift toward a securitised democracy, where dissent is treated as a threat to be contained rather than a right to be protected.
Given Labour’s track record with the Terrorism Act—proscribing Palestine Action and criminalising public support—there is little doubt this new law will be weaponised against left-wing and pro Palestinian activism as well.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy is how starkly this authoritarian trajectory contrasts with Labour’s historic role.
This is the party that stood at Cable Street against fascists, whose members fought with the International Brigades in Spain, and which supported anti-apartheid activists disrupting arms shipments to South Africa. Figures like Audrey White are heirs to that tradition. Today, the same party criminalises activists who act in that tradition.
Starmer’s Labour has traded moral clarity for political expediency. By appeasing corporate and pro-Israel lobby interests, courting right-wing voters, and prioritising “law and order” optics, it has abandoned its base—trade unionists, anti-racists, and progressives.
The implications are severe. Criminalising protest will not stop dissent; it will drive it underground. Tolerating far-right intimidation emboldens fascist groups, creating a permissive environment for real hate. Most dangerously, Labour is normalising political policing, establishing legal precedents that future governments—of any political stripe—can exploit.
Once protest is defined as a security threat, no movement will be safe, beholden to the whims of the government. Today it is Palestine Action; tomorrow it could be literally anyone, but you’re more likely to be targeted for standing up for Palestine than attacking a hotel full of asylum seekers it seems.
From the proscription of Palestine Action to the brutalisation of Audrey White, from far-right riots in Epping to Yvette Cooper’s proposed “thought crime” law, the pattern is clear: Labour is criminalising dissent while tolerating or ignoring fascist intimidation. This is authoritarianism not so much even by stealth any more, but increasingly blatant, dressed in the language of security. And they still think they can win votes back like this?
If this trajectory continues unchecked, Britain will no longer be a functioning democracy in any meaningful sense. Civil society, trade unions, and ordinary citizens must resist—not only for Palestine solidarity activists or asylum seekers but for the very principle of democratic protest itself. This should actually go beyond political leanings, because it is a threat to every one of us. Once protest itself is criminalised, the door to authoritarian rule will have been thrown wide open.
So much of what Starmer is getting away with is due to one particular part of the Terrorism Act – Section 12 – and I went into why this is so toxic and so in need of repeal and replacement in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch, in light of all of those other arrests we’ve seen around the country this past weekend by people standing up for Palestine and the right to protest.
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