United Kingdom starts jailing political protesters

Tonight, the United Kingdom starts jailing political protesters, including two years in prison for a man who gesticulated at the police.

For centuries, the United Kingdom has had a respect for civil liberties. But in recent decades, there's been a bit of a police-state undercurrent. There is something called anti-social behaviour orders, where if any people are threatening to become unruly they could be issued an order to disperse, kicked out of a pub, or kicked out of a soccer stadium, despite not having done anything. It was an attempt to deal with the phenomenon of football hooliganism, but the way they executed it really undermined a lot of freedom of association, freedom of assembly, and freedom of speech. Maybe it would be acceptable if it was just for the football lads but those same football lads have a right to political expression too.

The UK also probably has more spy cameras per capita than anywhere else in the world, other than maybe communist China. And of course, in addition to these anti-social behaviour orders, they also have things called non-crime hate incidents. That is, if you do something on Facebook or Twitter or say something that's not technically a crime, the police will still come to your house.

The UK used to have a very light touch. It was said that a law-abiding Brit could go his entire life without having any contact with a police officer. Well, that's over now.

Now the UK has gone nuts. As we saw in yesterday's clip, merely insulting people is now an arrestable crime. And it's not done yet. It might just be getting started.

GUEST: Leader of The Reclaim Party, Laurence Fox, on the state of the UK.