Sunak says the UK is descending into mob rule. Critics accuse him of undermining protest rights

Get Nadine White's Race Report newsletter for a fresh perspective on the week's news Get our free newsletter from The Independent's Race Correspondent Get our free newsletter from The Independent's Race Correspondent SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Sunak told a meeting of police leaders on Wednesday that there was a ”pattern of increasingly violent and intimidatory behavior” that’s intended to “shout down free debate and stop elected representatives doing their job.” “There is a growing consensus that mob rule is replacing democratic rule,” he said, according to a transcript released by the prime minister’s office. “And we’ve got to collectively, all of us, change that urgently.” Tom Southerden of Amnesty International said Thursday that talk of mob rule “wildly exaggerates the issue and risks delegitimizing the rights of peaceful protest.” Mass protests have drawn hundreds of thousands of people to central London almost weekly to call for a cease-fire in a conflict that has killed close to 30,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory. At Wednesday’s meeting, the government told police chiefs that protests at politicians’ homes “should generally be considered to be intimidatory.” Sunak told officers to take a “robust approach … to protect our democratic processes from intimidation, disruption, from subversion.” The debate comes after several years of increasingly stringent restrictions on peaceful protest by the Conservative government. “Freedom of expression and assembly are absolutely fundamental rights in any free and fair society,” said Southerden, law and human rights director at Amnesty U.K. “The U.K. has undergone a major crackdown on protest rights in recent years, with peaceful protest tactics being criminalized and the police being given sweeping powers to prevent protests taking place,” he said.