Freddie Attenborough

As the government’s Crime and Policing Bill makes its way through parliament, MPs on the Public Bill Committee are scrutinising its clauses today – including, potentially, Clause 86. If passed, this provision will make it a criminal offence to conceal your identity at a protest. For some people this may sound sensible enough. But for dissidents from authoritarian regimes – and their families thousands of miles away – it’s a very real threat to their physical safety. In fairness to those currently grappling with the issue, the legislation responds to a genuine problem: the adoption in the UK of the ‘black bloc’ face-concealing tactics pioneered by radical anarchists in the US.

At PMQs this week, Kemi Badenoch told MPs that Labour’s adoption of the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslim’s definition of ‘Islamophobia’ has inhibited public discussion of rape gangs. She pointed out that, according to this definition, anyone who draws attention to the over-representation of Muslims in the grooming gangs is guilty of Islamophobia. This, she argued, is why some members of the Parliamentary Labour Party have been ‘scared to tell the truth’. She’s right, but the problem runs deeper than that. The definition Mrs Badenoch referred to was drawn up by the APPG in 2018, when the co-chairs were Wes Streeting and Anna Soubry.