Well in america we had some "disruptive protests" (e.g. rodney king race riots) which were fundamental drivers of fixing systemic injustices in racial equality.

In fact, perhaps most progress toward justice required "disruption," and that's a bargain price to pay.

There are two of more things driving the cumulative protest legislation push. The test will come when the first use it, and we find out which they want to use it against.

1. We have had various highly disruptive repeated "climate" protests (Just stop Oil, etc)

2. We have had over a year of "pro Palestinian" hate marches, more or less every weekend.

3. We have had repeated protests outside various hotels repurposed as hostels for housing illegal migrants.

Of these the latter is the most recent, least disruptive, but most embarrassing for the regime. The regime seems to be complicit with the second.

I suspect most folks expect this power to be used against '2', but I'd not be surprised if it was used against '3' instead.

> So yes, if you interpret some random bill amendment in whatever way favors your side,

That is how laws often get interpreted. It gives the decision to a police officer. Do you think the police officer will ever make a decision which does not favour their side?

The argument - and wholly plausible prediction being made - is that these changes lay the groundwork for a legal definition of ‘subversion’ that could prioritise ideology over conduct, providing the state with a broader arsenal to classify any political dissent as a security risk.

This is ALREADY in play with the proscribing of Palestine Action, and subsequent arrest of protestors on Terrorism charges. They are absolutely spot-on in their conclusion that, "These developments reveal a state increasingly concerned with defending its own legitimacy that is weaponising security itself to shield power from accountability."

The potted history of Shabana Mahmood is a grotesquely cynical exemplar of this relatively new phenomenon.

In 2014, a backbench Labour MP named Shabana Mahmood lay on the floor of her local Sainsbury’s in protest against the sale of products made in illegal Israeli settlements. A week later, she spoke to crowds at a Free Palestine protest in Hyde Park, of the “compassion and humanity expressed for the people of Gaza … from every race and every religion.”

Mahmood is now the UK Home Secretary, and gets to decide if the more than 2,000 people arrested for alleged support of Palestine Action – mostly for holding placards stating: “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action” – will face criminal trial.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/nov/26/ban-on-pales...

Considering what is happening to the Palestine Action protestors right now in the UK, your waiving away of concerns is hard to read. Give an inch and they (current, or future governments) are given more scope to attempt to take a mile through interpretation or overreach.

- Broad discretionary powers

- Vague thresholds

- Pre-emptive justification

- Lack of neutral limits (time, geography, number of events)

- Expansion of police control over public assembly

Your post to waive away concerns as partisan or alarmist is either an intentionally bad act or, sorry, naive.

Indeed. Really the last thing HN needs right now is another overheated, low information discussion about the UK. But for whatever reason UK-bashing seems to have caught the popular imagination in recent times. (There are plenty of negative things that can legitimately be said about the present state of the UK, to be clear, but this sort of low quality reporting shouldn’t be getting attention here.)