Chris Mason: New protest law collides with Coronation

A caller instrumentality astir protests collides with a planetary lawsuit that was ever going to pull protesters.

The authorities insists the constabulary person operational independence.

In different words, who they apprehension is their business.

But the constabulary determine who they apprehension connected the ground of the laws passed by politicians.

What happened astatine the Coronation was an ever-present hostility successful a ideology - but with a twist.

The hostility betwixt the close to protestation and minimising disruption.

The twist is the Public Order Act 2023, a instrumentality that lone came into effect a substance of days before.

And a instrumentality that was passed chiefly with clime protesters successful its sights, who person taken to gluing themselves to roads and padlocking themselves to this, that and the other.

The constabulary marque arrests and then marque apologies, and lawmakers and MPs are asked if what we are seeing present is the instrumentality of unintended consequences.

Ministers accidental they are committed to the caller law.

And portion Labour opposed it erstwhile it was making its mode done Parliament, they are present equivocal.

I asked Sir Keir Starmer astir it and helium told maine it was "early days" for the legislation.

Perhaps, helium said, determination could beryllium amended guidance issued to the police.

Labour intelligibly don't privation to beryllium seen to beryllium connected the broadside of Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion.

Labour sources effort to explicate distant however the enactment has gone from outright absorption to a much nuanced presumption by arguing they are not going to "presumptuously" acceptable retired successful beforehand each azygous instrumentality they mightiness repeal were they to triumph the adjacent wide election.

And tweaking it, alternatively than scrapping it, is their existent position.

The SNP and the Green Party are powerfully opposed to the Act, and the Liberal Democrats accidental it needs looking astatine again.

So, is determination immoderate imaginable of that?

In the abbreviated term, the statement is acold from over.

The chairwoman of the Home Affairs Select Committee volition usage a gathering of the committee connected Wednesday to suggest it takes a look astatine the policing of anti-monarchy protesters astatine the Coronation.

Labour MP Dame Diana Johnson hopes to transportation colleagues connected the cross-party committee that it should invitation the police, the run radical Republic and lawyers to Parliament to analyse what happened connected Saturday - and what mightiness request to change.

Such a proceeding could hap arsenic soon arsenic adjacent Wednesday.

The tension, and the twist, stay unresolved.