A Week In Politics: Protests, Police, and Pretentious Attitude
By Olivia Jones
A lot can happen in a very short time in the political sphere. Parties can rise and fall, people can rise into favour or tumble into disrepute, and the unexpected can become the normal. I'm Olivia Jones, giving you the latest from this Week in Politics. This week; two MPs arrested, a new party forms, and new light is shed on a recent Shadow Cabinet leak.
In an upset week for London, a protest by the militant environmentalist group Nature Revolution with thousands of other climate groups attending converged on Parliament before marching over to 10 Downing Street. While initially it was only to be attended by NR themselves, after public dismissal of climate change concerns by the Prime Minister the event quickly caught traction until 10's of thousands would end up in attendance.
The event went well until someone cracked an egg on the head of Justice Secretary Vitiating, who had elected to walk through the crowd of protesters instead of around to get into Parliament. This resulted in the Met Police violently pushing protesters back, and it is understood that one of them body slammed Shadow Environment Secretary Kate Kawhena into the pavement.
The Labour MP responded by 'assaulting' (understood to be a punch or a push) the offending officer, and was quickly arrested by the Met Police. She remained in police custody without charge for 24 hours before being sentenced to 80 hours of community service and 5 months of 'no protesting'. When approached for comment, she had this to say.
"Yeah, well, it was probably not the smartest thing to do in the moment but you have to understand that I've just had the wind taken out of me, I'm tiny compared to this giant police officer who's just decked me, next thing I know I'm face first on the concrete again with handcuffs on. I have no qualms about doing community service, hell I'd do it without the conviction, but I do think it's representative of some of the problems with our policing system that a 5'3" BAME person who's as of yet done nothing wrong can get body slammed by a 6 foot+ Met officer - and I definitely find it interesting that the narrative of most media outlets is 'MP punches officer in moment of aggression' and not 'officer body slams MP in moment of aggression'. In the midst of the BLM movement reaching its head, and calls for police reform, I have experienced first hand the very sort of event that has been talked about by BAME movement leaders."
Kate Kawhena, Labour MP.
Another person of note was arrested at the protests, Green Party Co-Leader HK Norman. HK was seen graffitting a statue of Winston Churchill before being arrested by the Met. Reportedly they were taken to the same cell in a nearby Station, confirmed when Kawhena responded to a tweet by HK with "we really must finish that game of tic tac toe some time".
Soon after news of the arrests reached the public, the other Co-Leader of the Greens, AV200, tweeted that they would be offering legal aid to any protesters arrested on the day, and is suspected to be the person who paid for the bail of both arrested politicians.
The Scottish First Minister has taken the recent event to attack the Scottish Labour Party, of which Kate Kawhena is Deputy Leader, and we understand that they have approached other Scottish party leaders looking for support on this matter. Thus far it can be surmised that they did not receive any. They have indicated intention to use the event to launch a law and order platform, which would seem to be an odd stance to take in the middle of a global movement to reform, rather than increase, police activity.
In other news, the week has been an awful one for the Labour Party as yet another splinter group has formed. This party, called Solidarity, has many notable figures in politics; including wiredcookie1, who was the Labour Deputy Leader until Solidarity's formation. Deputy Leaderless, Party Leader Lily has also lost Shadow Defence motelblinds, Shadow Transport AlvaroLage, and Alweglim MP. When asked why they had formed the party, motelblinds had the following to say.
Solidarity is the result of a major lack of any strong and United left wing voice in Britain, we provide a viable socialist alternative to the British people that is hard to find elsewhere.
motelblinds, Leader of Solidarity
This comes in the wake of what feels like years of commentary by people across the political spectrum on a toxic environment within Labour. It was seemingly a given that something like this would happen eventually, according to many pundits, and at the very least it appears to not have come as a surprise to the LOTO. When approached for comment on the formation of Solidarity, Leader of the Opposition Lily_irl had this to say.
Of course it’s disappointing that some Labour members decided to leave in the manner they did, but I’m always happy to see new comrades on the Left wing. I’m always in favour of diversity of opinions (and) I wish them all the best and look forward to working with them in future.
Lily_irl, Leader of the Opposition.
This all happened hot on the heels of another scandal involving the Shadow Environment Secretary, after former Shadow Minister for Veterans Affairs GhandiWoreCrocs left the Shadow Cabinet after doing what we understand amounts of blackmailing the Labour Leadership on their Trident stance, having taken copies of the recorded Shadow Cabinet minutes and threatening to leak them if Lily did not alter the Party's established anti-nuclear positions that were decided at the most recent Labour Conference. The Leader of the Opposition immediately fired the MP, and gave this comment to the Independent on the affair.
What’s there to comment on? Threaten to leak and you’ll get sacked, it’s a rather simple concept that I’m disappointed he apparently couldn’t understand.
Lily_irl, Leader of the Opposition.
The Shadow Cabinet minutes were leaked anyway after the sacking, to the Spectator. In two articles almost identical to one another, it was revealed that during the writing process of Labour's recent statement on the Nature Revolution demands, Shadow Environment Kate Kawhena and Mr Crocs got into an argument over Trident - coming to a head with insults thrown and the attempted blackmail.
GhandiWoreCrocs refused comment on the matter.
As we understand it, Kawhena raised the point that the use of a nuclear deterrent against the civilian population of a city would be comparable to genocide, saying that "Russia's people are not responsible for the actions of their military (...) Russia people should not pay for the decisions of their dictator". Crocs labelled this response "appalling" and accused the Secretary of betraying the "millions you swore to serve".
We approached Kate Kawhena for comment on the leaks, which showed very little of the Shadow Cabinet conversation, and she helped fill in the gaps. Between the first leak and the second (featuring the "mental f*cking nutcase" comment), a number of events happened. For one, Kawhena said that she asked Crocs if he was ok with "responding to the murder of a bunch of Londoners by a dictator (with) killing a bunch of innocent Russians" to which Crocs responded with the retort "the Russian people are complicit in keeping the Russian dictatorship going, so yes".
Later on when Kawhena compared this attitude to defense of a potential genocidal act, Crocs is understood to have said "Yes, Kate, I will defend (the bombing of Moscow in a retaliatory strike). Can you clarify that you will sit idly by and let our enemies murder our people and you will do NOTHING?" in reference to her anti-retaliation stance, to which the Secretary responded with the abrasive remark "yes, because the answer to genocide is not more genocide you f*cking nutcase".
Upon the leak of the comments, featuring only Kawhena's commitment to non-retaliation and profanity, the views espoused by her in the leak received mixed response from the political spectrum. The Greens defended the Shadow Secretary, saying it was normal for Shadow Cabinet to become 'heated' while many Tories and Libertarians called for her sacking. One commentator in particular, People's Movement member ContrabannedtheMC, had this to say about the Labour MP's comments.
Well, if the idea you're defending is the death of potentially millions of innocent people purely because they happen to live in proximity to someone who has a fancy death button is justified - yeah, that's genocide. (...) It's quite frankly delusional to expect a retaliatory strike to do anything to advance the interests of those firing it. Our people would still be dead. And if we were to assume it was a leader such as Putin or Xi or Trump who fired the first strike, they'd very well be able to spin our retaliation as proof of our violent nature, and justify their first strike as a preemptive one. (..) If we don't strike, we are innocent victims. If we retaliate, we are bloodthirsty murderers. Either way, corpses litter the streets and the innocent pay for the crimes of the powerful.
ContrabannedtheMC, TPM MP.
It is certain that neither MP in the so called 'Cabinet Battle' are in the right; one tried to go against the policy of their own party, then blackmail their Leader, then leaked when they were fired for trying. The other was hostile to another on the Frontbench, using incredible profanity for a sitting Shadow Secretary. The incident merely highlights the rifts in Labour shown by recent splinters, and the dangers of late-night Cabinet meetings. However there is something else this incident says about our recent political climate.
We at the Independent like to see both sides of the story, and find it quite concerning that recent media has shown only singular comments usually from only one side of the spectrum - including the Spectator's refusal to take comment from Labour members, then mocking those criticising this behaviour in later articles. We have made a commitment to ensure everyone gets a fair go, and that doesn't involve allowing one or another politician free reign against another without being held to account.
The Independent will continue delivering its objective analysis of recent events, because times are challenging. And we encourage others to do the same. At times like this it's the media that must be the tool of holding the Government to account, not just the Opposition or particular members thereof. Any country in which the Opposition is attacked more than the Government is a country in which democracy is faltering. A healthy criticism of both is required for a sustainable discourse.
Alas it seems that objectivity is far ahead of us yet. Though really, who knows, anything can happen in a week in politics. I'm Olivia Jones, signing off.
Olivia Jones is a journalist based out of Central Birmingham. She has worked as a policy advisor for multiple parties before settling as a writer for The Independent. Her main articles are part of a weekly recap series named A Week In Politics.