If you vandalise innocent mini-roundabouts with red paint, politicians don’t care. But if you do the same with machinery that helps wanted war criminals commit genocide, politicians will call you terrorists and put you in jail.

That’s Britain today. It’s absurd. But at least it makes it clearer for anyone in doubt that most of our politicians don’t serve ordinary people – they serve the rich and powerful.

No interest in red-paint vandalism…

My area is currently full of mini-roundabouts which suddenly have the cross of St George on them. Local people aren’t all ultra-nationalists, though. I’ve probably seen just two houses – out of hundreds – that have put an English flag in their window in recent weeks. But it only takes a small number to have an impact. Because there’s no sign the council has any interest in un-vandalising the road markings.

I’ve seen a “standard response” on behalf of the local council. And while it points out that it’s “an offence to paint or make any unauthorised markings on the highway”, it says it will base any assessment on whether to act or not depending on “risk to the asset and risk to road users”. So if there’s “an immediate risk to assets or road safety they will be removed”. But in reality, of course, there’s no such risk. As a result, the response clarifies, the council will only un-vandalise the road markings “as part of our routine highways maintenance subject to funding”. In other words, it’s unlikely to happen any time soon.

I’ll be honest. It’s not exactly high on my list of priorities either. (I’d prefer for Britain’s participation in and support for the Gaza genocide to end first, and then for the government to fund the NHS, education system, and public housing properly.) But because Keir Starmer’s Labour government has decided to prioritise cracking down on vandalism of machinery with links to genocide, it’s hard to ignore the hypocrisy.

… unless it hurts the lucrative industry of death and destruction

The pro-Israel lobby is not the only lobby group in Britain. But it probably is the most prominent and aggressive lobby group that acts on behalf of a foreign state. (Ask the artificial intelligence bots of the corporations complicit in Israel’s genocide, and they’ll say the same thing.) As Declassified UK reported in 2024, a quarter of all MPs had received funding from the Israel lobby. And Starmer’s top team in particular is positively rolling in money from Israel supporters. In other words, it pays to support settler-colonial crimes.

So it’s clear that proscribing activists who dared to paint genocide-complicit machinery wasn’t about the vandalism. It was about what they were vandalising and who that annoyed. If it just annoyed local residents, there would be no real action. But because it annoyed influential lobbyists with the ear of our corrupt ruling class, politicians mobilised the full power of the state to try and harass non-violent opponents of genocide into silence.

The UK’s elites may cosplay democracy for appearances’ sake. But when a small number of people’s voices matter more than the majority’s, that’s not democracy. And the simple story of where you can – and can’t – put red paint sums that up perfectly.

Featured image via the Canary