Right, so Andy Burnham arrived at his first Labour Conference as Prime Minister, grinning like a toothpaste model getting their second advert.
Unfortunately for Andy, Palestine protesters had pencilled in a different agenda-one that didn't involve applauding him in any way, shape or form and for whom the Burnham bounce and the honeymoon period, fizzled out a lot faster than for most.
You see the image beaming out of Liverpool isn't Burnham basking in applause for finally riding us of Starmer, policy-wise most of us are struggling to notice the difference, it isn’t Labour at all, something else has taken precedent. It's Robert Del Naja of Massive Attack, parked on the pavement with an anti-genocide placard, getting bundled off by police under terrorism laws. Makes a change from a terror granny or a chap in a wheelchair I suppose.
The most dangerous weapon on display little more than a piece of cardboard and a felt-tip pen. And we’re supposed to believe Liverpool trembles in terror at this.
Burnham inherited this ongoing sick joke of a law, but he’s done nothing to do away with it either, so now he has to own it, and with his government out there still defending the policy, he deserves nothing less.
And judging by how spectacularly this has already now torpedoed his conference, I'd bet he's enjoying it about as much as a wasp in his underpants.
And the exchange between Del Naja and the officers gets right to the heart of it.
That exchange tells us more than any ministerial statement ever will.
The officer's position is straightforward. Palestine Action is proscribed, meaning the government has formally banned it as a terrorist organisation. Membership, inviting support and certain public expressions of support can therefore become criminal offences. Del Naja's placard gives the officer something to enforce, even if it is patently ridiculous.
Del Naja isn't interested in having a narrow one-sided conversation about it either. He's looking beyond the designation and asking what Britain is doing while Gaza is destroyed and British-linked companies remain part of Israel's military supply chain. You know, what’s actually important.
One has the wider argument.
The other has the handcuffs.
And Labour's public-safety nonsense comes apart at the seams on live TV once again, and again we recall those images of octogenarian priests and disabled people and more being carted off as terrorists for doing little more than holding up a sign. We know what the signs say, but every single arrest should be seen as a sign this government holds up too, essentially the equivalent of saying ‘we enable genocide, we support the state of Israel.’
The government would prefer us to concentrate entirely on the words "Palestine Action" at the bottom of that sign. The problem is that everyone can read the words above them, too.
"I oppose genocide."
You can spend all day splitting the legal hairs here. You can wheel out a Home Office minister to drone through the Terrorism Act until the nation's collective will to live evaporates.
The picture remains the same.
A musician holding an anti-genocide sign. Police everywhere. If it takes a law degree and a twenty-minute press briefing to explain why this isn't ridiculous, you've already lost. The picture has already won and is going viral.
Defend Our Juries organised this action to coincide with Labour Conference. It was silent, deliberate and designed to force the consequences of proscription into public view once again.
The organisers expected arrests.
That wasn't a failure of the protest. It was the entire point.
They offered the government a choice: tolerate peaceful dissent or produce footage that will make the policy look grotesquely disproportionate and utterly ridiculous all at the same time.
Labour's policy chose the footage.
And Del Naja was never going to disappear quietly into a police van without anybody noticing. As a founding member of Massive Attack, he has spent years talking about Gaza, Palestine and the arms trade. The band is known to be intensely political. Some musicians take a stand on such things Ed Sheeran.
Arresting him would always turn a relatively contained protest into a much bigger story.
That would be obvious to anyone with the political instincts of a half-dead houseplant.
There were 3,021 terrorism-related arrests in the year ending March 2026. That is the overall total, not a Palestine Action-only figure of course. But – and it’s a very big but - more than half of all terrorism arrests recorded since 9/11 have happened in that single year, after Palestine Action was proscribed, with the total up 1,434 per cent. So clearly the vast majority of them very much are the terror grannies and co.
It shows how dramatically the terrorism category has been expanded since the government started treating Palestine solidarity as a matter for anti-terror policing.
Separately, more than 3,600 people have reportedly been arrested for expressing support for Palestine Action since the ban.
Different reporting period. Different category. Same question though
What Frankenstein's monster of a supposed anti-terrorism agenda has the government cobbled together here? Britain's anti-terror framework is now netting people whose most dangerous public activity is sitting down, keeping quiet, and holding up a sign.
Before the Liverpool action, Del Naja recorded an appeal to Burnham alongside Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori and human rights barrister Michael Mansfield.
They knew exactly what the weekend was likely to produce.
Then the prediction became a video clip itself.
The campaigners did not need to exaggerate the policy or invent some hypothetical future abuse. They waited for it to operate in front of a camera. They knew it would, and the police and Labour kindly obliged.
Proscription was supposed to marginalise Palestine Action. Instead, every arrest creates another public argument about the ban. We keep on talking about it, it keeps on embarrassing us as a country, it shames us all that elected officials abuse their power essentially for the sake of another state.
It was supposed to make expressions of support socially poisonous. Instead, it has put artists, pensioners, barristers and others under the ban. And it was supposed to keep Labour Conference focused on the script. So, how's that masterplan working out for you now then?
Instead of discussing whatever painfully vague promise was written on the conference lectern, people are watching police surround one of Britain's most recognisable musicians.
The government's own statements on Gaza then make the whole thing worse.
There is the hole Labour has dug for itself.
It wants the moral benefit of condemning what is happening in Gaza without accepting the political consequences of that condemnation.
Ministers can describe the situation as unconscionable. They can acknowledge evidence that war crimes may have been committed. They can show appropriate concern at the dispatch box.
But when protesters treat those statements as something more than verbal upholstery, out comes the terrorism legislation.
Labour's message seems to be: Gaza is dreadful, obviously, but don't get all uppity about it.
Be appalled.
Just don't organise too effectively.
Express concern.
Just don't interfere with the companies supplying Israel.
Oppose genocide, by all means, but make sure you use the government-approved vocabulary or Constable Savage will come marching over the horizon.
The campaigners argue that the evidence warrants a criminal investigation into whether British government bodies and firms have aided and abetted genocide.
Prosecutors decide whether that evidence meets the threshold for charges. Courts determine whether criminal offences have been committed.
But Labour cannot make the political contradiction disappear by reciting the legal one.
Its ministers have said the situation is unconscionable. Its policy has produced an arrest for the sign now visible on screen though. Make it make sense, because that is what viewers will judge.
And Del Naja is not the only artist discovering how quickly support for Palestine brings professional consequences.
Macklemore was removed from the remaining American dates of Ed Sheeran's tour of course wasn’t he? But there’s a more recent development here now that has got him back in the news over Palestine.
The tour goes through Dublin, Paris and London, with proceeds intended for twelve organisations supporting Palestinians through medical care, humanitarian assistance, education, advocacy and community programmes.
The attempt to remove Palestine from someone else's tour created an explicitly Palestinian fundraiser now then?
That's not exactly the textbook definition of silencing, is it? More like the Streisand Effect with a Palestinian flag. But now someone else is kicking off over this, though not quite with the same clout as Robert Kraft.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism, fresh from whining about Green Party Conference and the upcoming Zionism Is Racism motion, spotted a rake on the ground and, true to form, stomped on it with both feet.
You see, the CAA has gleefully announced that it was writing to Wembley over the decision to host Macklemore’s London event.
As things currently stand, the concert remains listed for 30 October, with ordinary ticket sales due to open on 30 of this month.
The CAA has demanded action from Wembley and Wembley has not - at least at time of writing - cancelled the event. So now you’ve got twice the reason to go if so inclined – raise money for Palestine and flip the bird at the Israel Lobbyists.
Writing a letter is hardly the same as wielding power. Robert Kraft had power, the CAA has a keyboard and a chip on its shoulder. The delusions of grandeur are strong with this bunch.
And just as has been the case for the Green Party Zionism motion, the CAA's intervention has just given Macklemore's fundraiser another burst of free publicity and reminded more people when the tickets go on sale. Keep up the good work folks, the Palestinian cause’s most useful idiots right now.
The Liverpool arrest involves state power and terrorism legislation.
The Macklemore campaign involves promoters, venues and organised reputational pressure.
Not quite the same process, but what joins them is the assumption behind both: make support for Palestine costly enough and hopefully prominent people will learn to keep quiet.
Well they haven't.
Macklemore responded by building a Free Palestine tour.
Del Naja sat down in Liverpool and made the proscription policy front and centre outside Labour’s centre for self-congratulation.
Every attempt to narrow the conversation over Palestine has widened it.
Which brings the story back to Burnham himself, because the joint appeal doesn't just ask him to review inherited policy. It forces him to decide whether he accepts the political label his own government is applying.
That is Burnham's problem in one question.
Does he honestly believe the people being arrested over these placards are terrorists?
Not legally suspected of expressing support for a proscribed organisation. That is the statute book's answer.
Does Burnham himself believe they are terrorists?
If he does, he should stop hiding behind process and say it.
If he doesn't, he needs to explain why he is maintaining a policy that produces this result.
He may have inherited the ban from the previous Labour leadership, but he has also inherited the power to reconsider it.
You can't spend months strutting around as the antidote to everything that came under Starmer and being all saviour of the Labour Party, only to suddenly discover a deep love for continuing all of the awful things his predecessor did.
Eventually, inherited cowardice stops being a hand-me-down and becomes your signature move. When is this apparent change you stood for coming from, or is it Starmer’s definition of that word too?
And an arrest is not harmless merely because it may not produce a conviction.
Being detained is a consequence. Being investigated is a consequence. Having your name publicly connected with terrorism legislation is a consequence.
Del Naja has fame, lawyers and an international audience.
Most people caught by this policy do not.
Think of a care worker needing an enhanced DBS check, a student training for a regulated profession, or a parent who simply cannot gamble with an arrest hanging over them. For them, the punishment starts long before any case reaches a court.
That is a chilling effect in order to silence people from talking about Palestine and Israel.
The government does not have to imprison everybody to discourage everybody.
And Michael Mansfield has warned about what happens when political urgency starts shaping criminal justice more than restraint does.
He is not saying these cases are identical to the Guildford Four or Birmingham Six.
He is pointing to what those cases ought to have taught Britain.
Institutions can operate with tremendous confidence while getting something terribly wrong.
Police can follow procedure.
Ministers can cite legislation.
Newspapers can declare the matter settled.
And years later, everyone involved suddenly develops a fascinating inability to remember who was responsible.
So the final request to Burnham isn’t a very complicated one.
Burnham wanted his first conference to roll out a sparkly new Labour government. Instead, his Palestine crackdown crashed the party and stole the spotlight.
Macklemore was removed from one tour and came back with an arena fundraiser. Robert Del Naja was arrested and turned a proscription policy into the image Labour could not keep out of sight.
Labour tried to shove Palestine protest out of the political conversation. Instead, it put a famous musician in front of a wall of police, pointed every camera in Liverpool at him, and guaranteed the whole country would be talking about him and not them. At least not in a very positive way.
For more self-inflicted Burnham balls-ups, he’s racking them up faster than a Primark flash sale right now, do stick with the channel for more, such as this story right here.
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