I do not feel any sympathy for the collapse of Keir Starmer’s premiership. Apart from his abandoning his earlier pledges to help ordinary people and instead throwing them under the bus, one of his most despicable acts as prime minister was to declare war on the group Palestine Action. The group says that it is “committed to ending global participation in Israel’s genocidal and apartheid regime” and was protesting Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank, but Starmer’s government pushed through parliament a law branding it as a terrorist group.

Palestine Action, which was formally proscribed by the UK last July, is a British protest group founded six years ago. It says it uses “disruptive tactics” to target “corporate enablers” and companies involved in the manufacture of weapons for Israel, such as Israeli group Elbit Systems, Italian aerospace company Leonardo, French multinational Thales and Teledyne from the United States. The group has targeted British facilities linked to those companies.

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On June 20, 2025, Palestine Action activists broke into the Royal Air Force base at Brize Norton in Oxfordshire and sprayed two military aircraft with red paint.

Days after the Brize Norton attack, members of parliament voted in favour of proscribing the group. That classified Palestine Action as a “terrorist” organisation, bringing it into the same category as armed groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS).

Critics decried the vote, arguing that while members of the group have caused damage to property, they have not committed violent acts that amount to terrorism. More than 130 high-profile public figures have spoken out against the proscription.

Other previous actions the group has taken include:

• In 2021, members protested for six days on the roof of Elbit Systems’ subsidiary, UAV Tactical Systems in Leicester, until some were arrested by police.
• In 2022, the group broke into a Thales equipment factory in Glasgow, causing damage to weapons worth more than a million pounds ($1.3m).
• In 2024, 10 months into Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Palestine Action activists broke into an Elbit Systems UK facility near Bristol in southwest England, causing another million pounds of damage.

While the group’s actions did damage facilities, where Starmer went far too far was in not treating those acts as ordinary crimes to be treated through ordinary channels but in labeling them as terrorist acts and the group as a terrorist organization with its members liable to harsh penalties, and making it a crime even to just show support for the group. Authoritarian governments routinely use the label of ‘terrorism’ as a cudgel to bypass normal channels and issue extreme punishments that are disproportionate to the crime. This was a very Trumpian move on Starmer’s part, similar to the way that protesters against ICE in the US are being branded as terrorists for what would normally just be criminal acts.

A group of Texas protesters convicted of terrorism charges received harsh sentences of at least 50 years in prison Tuesday in a closely watched case that was widely seen as a test case of the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on dissent.

After a three week jury trial, the nine activists were all found guilty of a slew of criminal charges in March, stemming from a Fourth of July protest at an immigrant detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, south of Fort Worth. The demonstrators arrived late at night with a plan to set off fireworks as part of a noise demonstration to show solidarity with those detained inside. A few of the protesters spontaneously broke off from the main group and vandalized cars in the parking lot, a guard shack, slashed the tires on a government van and broke a security camera. When a police officer arrived on the scene and drew his weapon, one of the activists fired an AR-15 from the woods, hitting the officer in the shoulder. The officer survived.

Zachary Evetts, Autumn Hill, Savanna Batten, and Elizabeth Soto were sentenced to 50 years in prison. Maricela Rueda, another demonstrator, was sentenced to 70 years in prison. Benjamin Song, who fired the gun at the police officer, was sentenced to 100 years in prison. The other protesters were continuing to be sentenced Tuesday morning.

Even though many of the protesters did not know each other, or were loosely affiliated, prosecutors said the attack on the officer was premeditated and part of a conspiracy. They also said the activists were part of a “North Texas antifa cell”, which was seen as part of the administration’s effort to criminalize “antifa”, which is not an organization but rather a constellation of leftwing views.

This assault by Starmer on basic rights was symbolic of his utter tone-deafness in not realizing the depth of anger in the UK at the barbaric treatment by Israel of Palestinians, and his willingness to abandon his supporters and sacrifice basic human rights (it is incredible that at one time Starmer was a human rights lawyer) in order to curry favor with the Israel lobby. His actions enraged people and resulted in large numbers of the elderly and even disabled openly holding up signs supporting Palestine Action in public. We then had the sorry spectacle of police arresting and carrying them away, demonstrating the absurdity of Starmer’s overreach. More than 3,000 people have been arrested so far.

One test for prospective prime minister Andy Burnham is whether he will be as subservient to the Israeli lobby as Starmer was. His history on this issue is not good, once refusing to call Israel’s actions in Gaza genocide. But if he now calls for the repeal of the proscription of Palestine Action, that will be the best sign that he is aware of public sentiment. A lesser, but still positive, move would be to appoint a Home secretary who pulls back on enforcement actions against protestors., unlike the current Home secretary Shabana Mahmood. Just a couple of years ago, she was a vigorous supporters of Palestinian rights but after Starmer made her Home secretary, like other careerist neoliberals, she did an abrupt about face, and is now attacking the protestors.