Coffee House Shots: Starmer’s authoritarian turn – with Ash Sarkar

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4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 23 August 2025

⏱️ 16 minutes

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Summary

Since the government’s decision to proscribe the group Palestine Action, arrests have mounted across the country, raising questions not only about the group’s tactics but also about the government’s handling of free speech and protest rights.

On today’s special edition of Coffee House Shots, Michael Simmons is joined by The Spectator’s James Heale and journalist Ash Sarkar to debate whether this is evidence of an increasingly authoritarian bent to Starmer’s Labour. Has the ban made prosecutions easier, or has it created a chilling effect on freedom of expression? And is this further evidence of the overreach of the attorney-general, Lord Hermer?

Also on the podcast, with Keir Starmer’s majority secured but his party’s membership dwindling, is there space for a new populist party to Labour’s left? Ash defends Jeremy Corbyn and Zara Sultana’s efforts to establish Your Party. Should they be taking a leaf out of Reform’s playbook?

Produced by Oscar Edmondson and Patrick Gibbons.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	At Philip Morris International, we're delivering a smoke-free future today.
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0:17.0	Learn more at pmi.com slash progress.
0:26.5	Music Learn more at PMI.com slash progress. Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots.
0:29.5	I'm Michael Simmons, and today I'm joined by the spectators, James Heel, and the journalist
0:35.0	Ash Sarkar.
0:36.6	Now, it seems every day now we get a new story about a
0:41.7	different person or a different group of people who have been arrested for supporting the
0:47.2	prescribed group, Palestine Action. Ash, do you think the government's achieved what it wanted to achieve by prescribing the group,
0:56.3	or have they misstepped here?
0:57.8	Well, it's very difficult for me to get my head around what it was that the government
1:01.5	wanted to achieve.
1:02.9	I think what happened was is that they were under a lot of pressure, including from weapons,
1:08.6	manufacturing lobbyists, including from the Israeli embassy, to crack down on
1:13.5	Palestine action, whose direct action against the Israeli weapons firm Elbit has been relatively
1:19.8	successful. It definitely raised the costs of Elbit operating in the UK. And it was after the
1:26.0	action at RAF Brise Norton that I think the government
1:29.0	felt that they had a window to do something which maybe they'd been wanting to do for a long time.
1:33.7	Because previously, the kinds of legislation that would apply to a group like Palestine action,
1:38.9	it would be things like trespass, criminal damage, things of that nature. And the defences
	...

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