New home secretary will be ‘just as tough’ on Palestine Action

New Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood will be “just as tough” as Yvette Cooper on Palestine Action, a senior Labour cabinet minister has said.

Defence Secretary John Healey said: “I expect Shabana Mahmood to be just as tough as Yvette Cooper and expect her to defend the decision the Government’s taken on Palestine Action, because of what some of its members are responsible for and were planning.”

Mahmood later herself posted on X: “Supporting Palestine and supporting a proscribed terrorist group are not the same thing”.

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Healey’s comments came after the Metropolitan Police condemned the “intolerable” abuse it claims its officers suffered while arresting more than 890 people protesting against the banning of Palestine Action as a terror group.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Claire Smart said of Saturday’s demo: “In carrying out their duties today, our officers have been punched, kicked, spat on and had objects thrown at them by protesters.

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Asked why Cooper had been moved out of the Home Office, the Defence Secretary told Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips: “Because I think Keir Starmer has decided that as part of going up a gear, demonstrating the next phase of delivery, he wants Shabana Mahmood, who’s done so well getting to grips with the prisons crisis, to do that in the Home Office.

“And he’s going to use the skill that Yvette Cooper has shown in striking a returns deal with France, which the Conservatives couldn’t do (in the Foreign Office)”.

He added:”If we want to avoid a two-tier policing and justice system in this country, when people break the law, there have to be consequences.

“That’s what was happening yesterday, and I, we, almost everybody shares the agony when we see the images from Gaza, the anguish when we see the man-made starvation, and for people who want to voice their concern and protest, I applaud them.

“But that does not require them to link it to support for Palestine Action, a proscribed group.”

Mahmood, MP for Birmingham Ladywood, has won admirers for being an effective justice secretary and persuasive communicator while forcing through potentially explosive policies such as prisoners’ early release schemes and a new sentencing regime.

She becomes the first Muslim woman to lead one of the great offices of government, but has already been subjected to taunts from those on the far-right about her background.

Mahmood has previously been outspoken in support of the Palestinian cause, and is in favour of the recognition of a Palestinian state, having stressed two-states would also help bolster Israel’s security.

In 2014 she took part in a protest against against the sale of West Bank settlement goods, and was pictured carrying a Free Palestine outside a Sainsbury’s store in Birmingham.

Danny Stone, director of the Antisemitism Policy Trust, has been among those to defend Mahmood from criticism from the right of the community, posting on X that Mahmood “has been kind, thoughtful, and supportive in all of my dealings with her, including on serious issues of conspiratorial antisemitism. She has been relentlessly abused and deserves some kindness”.

Stone added that she has “taken direct action against antisemitism”.

Mahmood is also expected to unveil plans to move asylum seekers from hotels into military barracks as the Government seeks to harden its immigration policy amid rising numbers of crossings in the Channel.

On Sunday the Met claimed there was a “co-ordinated effort to prevent officers from carrying out their duties which escalated to violence”, by Palestine Action activists and criticised the fact that the 2,500 officers policing the protest were taken away from duties elsewhere in the capital.

Defend Our Juries – organisers of the Parliament Square rally in which 1,500 people took part – insisted it was “the picture of peaceful protest” and that the Met’s claim about abuse was “astonishing”.

More than 425 people had been arrested by around 9pm, police said, but arrests were expected to continue.

On Sunday, it was confirmed the number of arrests had risen to 890, including 17 incidents against officers.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Smart added: “It is intolerable that those whose job it is to enforce the law and keep people safe – in this case arresting individuals committing offences under the Terrorism Act – should be subject to this level of abuse.

“Our role in the context of protest remains as it always has been – to police without fear or favour, to enforce the law, and to ensure those exercising their right to protest can do so safely. Where a group advertises that they intend to commit crimes, we have a duty to respond accordingly.

“The tactics deployed by supporters of Palestine Action in their attempt to overwhelm the justice system, as well as the level of violence seen in the crowd, required significant resource which took officers out of neighbourhoods to the detriment.”