Kiran Stacey

So if it is going to ban people like, for example, Valentina Gomez, a right wing campaigner, agitator, because she was filmed burning a Koran and has referred to rapist Muslims, then it also, I think, felt it was under an obligation to act quite strongly against anybody who had made what it regarded as anti-Semitic comments as well.

No, they would definitely say that these are fears of civil unrest that they have.

I mean, I don't think anybody in the government would say that they are trying to police free speech.

Ministers in the department know that if they start getting into an argument about what is acceptable and what isn't acceptable speech, they're going to very quickly be dragged into a quagmire that's going to be difficult to escape from.

So the government would say that they're simply trying to safeguard the public.

in their arguments.

But you have to look at these cases in the context of what else the Home Office has done recently.

And in Shabana Mahmood, we have quite an authoritarian by instinct Home Secretary.

And in Keir Starmer in Downing Street, you do also have somebody who really believes in the power of the state.

And I mean, I wouldn't call him authoritarian, but certainly believes that the state can be

used to curtail people's liberties in a way I think that former prime ministers haven't.

And so this is within their political philosophy to take stronger action on preventing people coming into the country than they might otherwise have done.

I mean, let's just think about that Unite the Kingdom rally, by the way, for a moment.

There were genuine concerns that that rally was going to turn violent and this was going to be an extremely sensitive moment in British politics.

And I think that's why they took quite strong action going into that.

I just think having set that bar now, officials in the Home Office feel that they have to meet it every single time.

And so let's see how many others end up falling foul of exactly where the Home Office has drawn that line.

I think that's right.

But, you know, that's part of the job of politics, isn't it?

These decisions don't take place in a vacuum and politicians do have to take into account the context in which they're being made.