Irish Examiner view: Protests cap Labour’s worst week in Britain
Supporters of Palestine Action take part in a mass action in Parliament Square, Westminster, London. Picture: Stefan Rousseau/PA
It’s some 57 years since The Rolling Stones told us they could “hear the sound of marching, charging feet”.
It was 1968 when Mick Jagger, always with an eye on topicality, wrote his lyrics to accompany a summer and autumn of protest with large-scale demonstrations against the Vietnam War and student revolts across Europe.
Compared to what was then happening in Chicago, Prague, and indeed in Northern Ireland, the current outbreak of urban disobedience can be considered relatively small beer.
Not that it will seem as such as authorities face off with supporters of Palestine Action, the organisation which has high-profile media support from celebrities such as eco-activist Greta Thunberg and our own Sally Rooney.
At least 1,500 people, many in their 60s and above, will attempt to break terror laws which many consider draconian through a programme of mass civil disobedience. The plan is to sit, holding signs proclaiming: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”
Upon arrest, they are advised to “go floppy” and refuse to provide personal details which will mean each protestor has to be removed to a police station to be charged.
Similar plans are in place for London, Wales, Scotland, and the North, with the objective of overwhelming the police and the judicial system.
It is a tactic used by environmental campaigners such as Extinction Rebellion.
Many in Ireland have sympathy for pro-Palestinian protesters and see the British government’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation as an over-reaction.
We might, then, ask ourselves why a British Labour home secretary and a prime minister who is a human rights lawyer, with an overall majority of 148 seats, have done this foolish thing.
From these shores, it may be difficult to discern that a substantial number of British people view Palestine Action not as doughty campaigners for the right thing but as an anti-democratic and coercive movement bringing regular disruption to their lives.
It had no mandate to attack the aircraft of the RAF, an organisation of which our neighbours are especially fond.
The raid on Brize Norton was a major misjudgement.
Extinction Rebellion had to step away because of public animus over the strategies it adopted.
Palestine Action may seem, to a substantial number of British voters anyway, to be part of the same lineage.
While this row may have caught the attention of prominent Irish writers, musicians, and artists, it is also a symptom of a bigger crisis engulfing Britain’s political system which was driven again by the resignation of deputy prime minister and left-wing standard bearer Angela Rayner.
She had to go because of a casual and ambiguous attitude towards the under-payment of stamp duties on a seaside home in Hove, Sussex.
Given that she is the minister responsible for housing in a government which is targeting homeowners for extra tax, her position was insupportable.
Much of Labour’s electoral campaign was based on the proposition that it would eliminate sleaze.
For Keir Starmer, the scandal could not come at a worse time.
His chancellor is under severe economic pressure and public support for Reform UK is galloping ahead, regularly achieving 30% in the polls.
In this country, we like to scoff at the Gilbertian figure of Nigel Farage.
However, it should be noted that the party is going mainstream.
A report from pollsters this week observes: “Reform supporters increasingly resemble the everyday, average Briton in demographics, habits, and everyday lifestyle.”
The Rayner story is a major boost to its political agenda, as was the heavy-handed response by armed police to online comments by the tendentious Irish writer Graham Linehan.
Saturday’s demonstrations or, more importantly, government reaction to it could easily deliver yet another gift.
Great fashion designers may depart from the mortal coil, but they have an immortality in their names.
Louis Vuitton? Died 1892. Coco Chanel? 1971. Mario Prada, 1958; Christian Dior, 1957; Gianni Versace, 1997.
Among those we can now number Giorgio Armani, the Milanese man who died this week.
He leaves a business empire valued at $10bn (€8.5bn), along with a casual style of fashion that encouraged anyone aspiring to anything more eye-pleasing than the drab modern uniform of trackie bottoms paired with a hoodie and trainers.
Armani, who was 91, dressed the stars in more than 200 films, with his breakthrough Italian tailoring coming to the fore on Richard Gere in 1980’s .
This was just five years after he launched his fashion house, which has remained in his own hands.
So much in demand were his designs for the red carpet, that the Oscars were sometimes known as “the Armani Awards”.
His ambition, he once said, was “to make men and women look better.”
He didn’t even mind when counterfeiters copied his designs.
“I am very glad that people can buy Armani — even if it’s a fake,” he said.
He was described by as “the world’s master tailor.”
That popularity is unlikely to diminish.
We hear a great deal, often from politicians or pundits, about the “law of unforeseen consequences” — where actions taken for one (usually innocent or noble) motive can have unexpected, and often harmful, repercussions.
History has countless examples, with a favourite apocryphal version telling of a British plan to reduce the cobra population of Delhi by paying a bounty on each dead reptile delivered to a government office during the Raj.
Enterprising locals twigged quickly that there were easy rupees to be made from a breeding programme.
Result? More cobras than ever in the community when the incentive scheme was scrapped.
It would serve us better if our society could concentrate on the law of “foreseen consequences”. We are not short of them.
Who could have imagined that a light touch towards regulating and policing the use of e-bikes could unleash a new substantial risk on our highways and byways, producing hundreds of crashes, serious injuries, and deaths.
Or that the growth of commercial drone deliveries in Ireland would precipitate increasing levels of complaint about noise and intrusion.
How surprising is that?
What about the facility with which people can order drugs — many of which should only be available through a prescription — online?
The serious extent of the illegal trade was driven home this week when our Health Products Regulatory Authority (HPRA) confirmed that nearly 400,000 units of illicit medicines were seized in the first six months of 2025.
Among the products were sedatives, anabolic steroids, erectile dysfunction medicines, and the fast-growing market for “weight-loss injections” and “skinny jabs”.
Of particular interest to criminals, because of the high cost and limited availability to the general public, are GLP-1 type medicines authorised for the treatment of diabetes or for weight management under certain conditions, or both.
The brand names and active substances associated with approved medications include Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro.
Just 716 units of such items were detained during the second half of 2024, compared to more than 11,000 this year.
In Britain, GPs are warning of black market growth after US-owned Eli Lilly said it was increasing the price of Mounjaro by as much as 170%.
A month’s supply of the highest dose of the drug is rising from around $140 to $380.
A discount will be applied to NHS supplies, but the drug is only available to people with a body mass index of 40 or above, or one of four weight-related health problems such as type two diabetes.
Currently there are thought to be around 1.5m people on weight-loss drugs in Britain.
Eli Lilly, which employs more than 3,700 people in Ireland, has manufacturing facilities in Limerick and Kinsale; a global business solutions centre in Little Island, Cork; and a nationwide commercial team. It has had an Irish base since 1978.
HPRA director of compliance Gráinne Power said prescription medicines obtained from unregulated sources may be “counterfeit, falsified, or contaminated”, factors which pose “a serious threat to the health of anyone who uses them.”
Individuals providing these services may see themselves as online entrepreneurs, but they are criminals — simple and not so pure.
They are running a line just as much as if they were standing on a city street corner. And just as bad for your health.
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