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Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Katie Balls

and I'm joined by James F Forsythe and Fraser Nelson.

This weekend we saw thousands of protesters take to the streets across the UK for the Black Lives

Matters movement. However, there were a number of incidents which have led the news. Boris Johnson

has intervened on Sunday night he called out the thuggery, which he said had changed the nature

of a protest, even though it was by a few. Pretty Patel, the Home Secretary, has also criticised

some of the protesters, particularly in response to a statue of Edward Colston being pulled down

in Bristol, the slave owner. James, are we seeing a change in response from the government

in terms of how it is treating these protests? Because last week at least, there was a big effort

to say they understood why people would want to protest, but anything would have to be done

in a socially distanced manner, which it's proved as quite hard to do. Yes. I think the government initially

his desire was just to kind of emphasize that people should comply with social distancing

or they shouldn't go to large gatherings. I think they felt that saying that they were sympathetic

to what the protesters were saying was the kind of most effective way of getting that

message over. I think obviously some of the

violence that happened at the weekend forces the government to issue a response. Now, I mean, let's take

the statute of Edward Colson in Bristol. I think there is obviously a debate about the statute,

...