by Sunny Hundal

Here is Steve O’Connell:

The point I’m making here is in the new era of very difficult financial choices are we able to continue with the luxury of demonstrations going forward in a very liberal manner with a small ‘l’ and commit the costs that we have in the past? I don’t believe we can afford to go forward in that way.

O’Connell is a Tory Assembly Member and former banker who gets paid: £43,861 as a Croydon councillor, £53,439 for sitting on the London Assembly and £21,211 as chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority’s finance and resource committee.

That’s over £118k annually out of the public purse, making him Britain’s highest-paid councillor.

Britain’s second highest paid councillor is also a Conservative. Brian Coleman is on £118,499 a year: £38,177 as a Barnet councillor and cabinet member (up from about £27,000 last year), £53,439 for sitting in the Assembly and £26,883 as chairman of London’s fire service.

Steve O’Connell told the Metropolitan Police Authority (via Adam Bienkov at Tory Troll):

Should we not actually be considering whether we can continue offering the [policing] service to these demonstrations? Should we not have a situation where we get to the stage where if the funding isn’t there to provide the service, we should be having a conversation with the organisers where we say “you cannot have your event because we do not have the resources to fund it”?

In the past controversial plays have had to be shut down because the police did not want to bear the costs of policing the protests.

With Boris increasingly displaying authoritarianism – banning Democracy village and threatening motorcycle protesters – it looks increasingly like the Tories aren’t as enthusiastic about civil liberties as they’ve claimed.