Polanski didn’t have much of an answer to it, even though it’s not a difficult one to answer from a principled position. You can report hate crimes if you want, but the right to free speech of thousands of people should be balanced against the possibility of hate crimes being committed by a tiny minority on those marches.

I think this principle stands both ways, too, because it’s clear that far right rallies are permitted, despite hate speech being kind of the point of those rallies. I’m not sure why Polanski couldn’t have answered this better, especially when he is in the right.

A lot of handwaving going on here, and motivated reasoning too. I’m voting Green in May but that doesn’t mean I have to believe they are perfect. They do and have done a lot of dumb things. I voted Labour in 2024 and I criticised them at the time and still do now. Not sure why people need to support parties like football teams.

One thing I have to give Labour credit for (Ed Milliband in particular) is their Net Zero policies. They really are doing the hard work of decarbonising our country.