Originally published on Lib Dem Voice: https://www.libdemvoice.org/alistair-carmichael-liblink-palestine-action-ban-reveals-labours-dangerously-authoritarian-instincts-78119.html

Alistair Carmichael has criticised the Labour Government for its proscription of Palestine Action. In a recent column for the Scotsman he talked about why he was never able to join the Labour Party:

For all the similarities between Liberal Democrats and Labour, the differences matter too.

Labour has centralising instincts that will always be anathema to liberals who champion community empowerment. Then there is the freedom thing.

Scratch any Labour government and you will find a deep authoritarian streak. It is increasingly apparent that this is every bit as true of Yvette Cooper’s Home Office as it was of those headed by David Blunkett, John Reid and Jack Straw.

He sums up the differences between us and Labour pretty neatly:

For liberals, protecting freedoms of speech, assembly and protest is a given. It runs to the heart of how we see the relationship between the citizen and the state. For Labour, these freedoms are rarely more than ‘nice to have’ when circumstances allow.

He said very much out loud that the Labour decision to proscribe Palestine Action was a mistake:

Targeting military installations for acts of vandalism is not an acceptable tactic to promote the Palestinian cause. It does not, however, make you a terrorist organisation and the decision to proscribe Palestinian Action was disproportionate and a mistake. That proscription would lead to the sort of scenes that we witnessed at the weekend was inevitable.

He called it “illiberal and oppressive” and concluded:

Anti-terrorism laws should be used to deal with terrorists, not our own citizens who wish to demonstrate their disagreements with their government.

Ultimately the biggest threat to our safety could turn out to be Labour’s authoritarian instincts.

You can read the whole article here.