the brilliantly leaping gazelle

A textbook example of what the phrase ‘Chickens coming home to roost,’ will play out on the streets of Central London on Sunday, and many ironies they display will not be suffered by those who properly deserve to suffer them. It is not various politicians, senior police officers or journalists who will have to face the consequences of their imagined virtue. They’ll be far too busy deciding which one of the prepared statements, explanations or articles best suits the mood they hope to create. I think some background might be in order here, don’t you?

On Tuesday, Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, approved the Metropolitan Police’s request to ban the annual Al Quds march, scheduled to take part in London this Sunday, over concerns it could provoke public disorder. Setting out her reasons for the ban to MP’s, she said ‘She said: “[This planned march] creates clear challenges for the police – heightened attention, and therefore larger expected attendance, heightened tensions between protesters and counter-protesters, and therefore greater potential for conflict.” Which is undeniably true. Only a fool would attempt to suggest otherwise. 

The Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), which organises the event, confirmed on Wednesday that it intended to hold a “static” protest instead. This indicates to me that they had likely foreseen the possibility of a ban, and had prepared accordingly. This throws the ball back into the governments court. He could attempt to close the loophole in the Public Order Act (POA) that the IHRC are exploiting to get around the ban. But that would leave him open to the charge of a knee-jerk response, given as how the forthcoming Crime and Policing Bill, which proposes greater powers for the police in respect of demonstrations, makes no mention of this. 

Of more concern to Emu are the local elections in May. Considering the collapse of the Labour vote in the Caerphilly and the Gorton and Denton by-elections however. It is by no means particularly astute to note that the Greens success in Gorton and Denton was due in no small part to their naked sectarian politics, ruthlessly playing on the concerns and prejudices of the constituency’s estimated 40% Muslim electorate. One can hardly blame the Greens for doing that, elections are nothing more than appeals to voters, which pander to their wants and needs, aspirations and values and also their resentments and frustrations. The Greens have just given it a 2026 makeover.

Be that as it may, the electoral reality facing Emu is problematic whatever he does. If the ‘static’ protest goes ahead and if some protesters cause disruption that leads to arrest, the last thing Emu needs is images of protesters being bundled away be police appearing on Green Party election leaflets. In the 2024 local elections, analysis identified at least 58 council wards where more than 20% of residents are Muslim. The Muslim Vote, (TMV) a campaign group that encourages Muslims to vote according to their faith alone, and which backed the Greens in Gorton and ahead of the 2024 general election identified 92 parliamentary constituencies with a Muslim population of over 10%, is very aware of the electoral opportunity that confers. So too are the Greens.

Voter turnout is low at any election, but especially at local council ones. In the 2025 local elections only 34% of eligible votes actually did so. Therefore banking on this to be repeated in May together with enthusing Muslim voters to vote is a shrewd piece of demographic democracy. Again, this no less than Labour and the Conservatives have done to great effect may times. Tax cuts. Right to buy. Privatisation….

The difference here though is that there’s a very specific calculus at work here, one not based upon a more traditional conception of what motivated people to vote – basically self-interest –  but as I mentioned earlier, given a 2026 makeover. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself. May? May never happen! But Sunday probably will. A ‘static’ protest will almost certainly not happen. Imagine telling a group of children that they can’t do something, a group of children who’ve just eaten a load of sugar and then imagine that the sugar gives them not energy, but anger. Then multiply that anger by intolerance, then multiply that by and then multiply that by antisemitism and then try telling them to stay in one place. And while they’re not going anywhere, to also not nosily denounce Israel for a catalogue of imagined wrongs, not call for it to be wiped off the face of the earth and neither to demand that violence against Jews be visited upon them all around the world. 

But had the police – and I mean very senior police – after consultation with equally senior government officials and lawyers given clear instructions to the police actually policing the pro- Palestinian marches back in October 2023, this situation might easily have been avoided. Had the police on the front line facing the protesters known, and had confidence in, a robust, immediate and implacable defence from the higher-ups, Sunday might be different. Same goes for the protesters. Had they known ahead of time that the police would be enforcing the law and not just acting as enhanced stewards, then they too might’ve acted differently. Or perhaps they wouldn’t.  

But then again, the protesters passions might not have been so passionate had they not been inflamed by the constant vilification of Israel’s conduct in Gaza been so enthusiastically denounced by the media. The nonsenses of a genocide, deliberate starvation and the cold-blooded execution of aid workers. Their credulous acceptance of the  of the casualty figures released by the Hamas run health ministry gave a new meaning to the word uncritical. The reality of fighting a war in a confined urban environment, one in which the enemy had deeply embedded themselves in and who were indistinguishable from the civilian population was rarely mentioned. 

So too the opportunistic politicians, who saw an electoral opportunity and ran with it.  They talked up the various nonsenses that the media were enthusiastically reporting on, gave them ill-deserved credibility and reaped the electoral benefit. Does anyone really believe that the ludicrous alliance between the Greens and the hardline pro-Gaza/anti-Israel Muslim left would’ve happened were it not for October 7th? Or that numerous Labour politicians were all too aware of their slender majorities, majorities that had already been slashed in the 2024 election and thus were wary lest they say or do anything to further alienate their Muslim constituents.  

Thus the corner that Emu has painted himself into is because he has failed to grasp that even though the political landscape may be ever changing, a constant remains. The inescapable fact that domestic politics are shaped by international ones and consequently everything is in the national interest. Of which he won’t be the custodian of forever and which he seems worryingly cavalier about prioritising. He is unashamed in using law to justify whatever actions – or inactions – he does or doesn’t do. Preventing US planes to use the RAF base at Diego Garcia being but the latest example of him doing this, apart from when a few days later he said yes to the thing he’d previously said no to, citing yet more law as justification. 

And whilst the police are theoretically impartial enforcers of the law, and will acutely aware many operational and logistical challenges challenges they will face on Sunday. so too will TMV, the Greens and Reform UK be if those challenges become catastrophes.