by Sunny Hundal

[hat-tip @bevanitellie for alerting me)

That pretty much sums up this confused government.

Tory bloggers were yesterday furiously trying to defend this attack on our civil liberties. Iain Dale and Tory Bear both claimed the tent was on a world heritage site. It is not (via @hannahnicklin).

Later it became an issue about the protest being an “eyesore” or “making life harder for tourists” or because it was “semi-permanent”. What an atrocious measure of whether protests should be allowed or not.

Say hello to the new boss. Same as the old boss.

There was at least one Conservative who got it. David Skelton writes:

Needless to say, whether you agree with the demonstrators or not should be beside the point. If you believe in freedom to protest then you believe in freedom to protest. The right to protest should not be limited because you do not agree with the views of the protestors or because you believe that the protest is creating an ‘eyesore’ (which is, after all, a subjective term anyhow). The right to protest should certainly not be limited because it causes a minor inconvenience to Members of Parliament.

I doubt many other Tories will rally to the cause.