Huda Ammori v Secretary of State for the Home Department

Analysis - Nick King

Long-established amongst the senior-most portfolios in UK government, the Home Secretary enjoys a degree of constitutional deference ex-officio in certain matters of national security and the public interest concerning the discretionary powers with which s/he is entrusted.

Yvette Cooper, the current incumbent as of July 2024, committed to print an article declaring Palestine Action, the direct action group proscribed by her executive order of 5 July 2025, an illegitimate protest organisation ("Yvette Cooper: Palestine Action 'is not lawful protest'"; The Observer, 17 August 2025). The article has exposed numerous difficulties with the Home Secretary's decision to pursue this course of action, raising doubts around its genuine motivation and the validity of the grounds upon which it is being pursued.

Delineating a few concerns:

1. Disingenuity:

Anyone who wants ... to oppose Israel's military offensive, or to criticise the actions of any and every government ... has the freedom to do so ... To claim otherwise is nonsense.

Whilst this position may be advanced platitudinously in the abstract, proceedings before the High Court this summer revealed it plainly contrary to fact that 'the recent proscription of the group Palestine Action' has not interfered with expression of such protest.

2. Dissemblance:

The Home Secretary alleges Palestine Action culpable of "criminal damage, including to Britain's national security infrastructure, but also intimidation, violence, weapons, and serious injuries to individuals."

This could be termed 'stacking the charge sheet'. While Palestine Action might be arguing over the criminal characterisation of the property damage, the latter heads of accusation are understood to be resolutely contested.

3. Deception:

"The clear advice and intelligence given to me earlier this year from the UK's world-leading counter-terrorism system, based on a robust assessment process, was that Palestine Action satisfies the relevant tests in the Terrorism Act 2000 and should be proscribed."

The report generated by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC), its contents having found their way into the public domain, is seen not to support the spin apparent in the Observer article.

4. Deratiocination:

Undisclosed "disturbing information" of "important details [that] cannot yet be publicly reported because of criminal proceedings" implies a logical circularity in proscriptive reasoning that elevates an imputation to the status of solid supporting evidence.

This is a problem for the mechanics of the proscription order in particular.

5. Disparagement:

Aversion to any acknowledgement of Palestine Action's declared motivation or intended goals. A vague ellision, divorced from any concrete grounding, invokes a spectral threat to 'public safety', masking off Palestine Action's publicised objective of frustrating the UK's complicity in genocide.

6. Defamatory insinuation:

Similarly, the listing in full of an aggregated schedule of charges ('no smoke without fire!'), or the drawing attention to incidental circumstances to imply correlation with some inferred culpable agency ... each reads like a sophistic sleight. Unremarkable, perhaps, if seen in an ambitious politician's hustings' pitch; when in print, from the Secretary of State for the Home Department, then the plausibility underwriting the contested decree looks perilously underreserved.

Cooperballs

The difficulty with the foregoing is simply that arm's length analysis of 'all the security assessments, advice and recommendations on Palestine Action' known to the public can very well not conclude that it 'would be irresponsible' to avoid proscription of the group. The issues are multiple:

•  Firstly, allegations aired about the motives and actions of a proscribed group will be unfalsifiable - and hence unreliable - to the extent that any articulated refutation risks offending under the Terrorism Acts.

•  Secondly, and self-evidently, additional to a highly tendentious reliance on partial information subject to legal proceedings is the public presentation in print of the highly tendentious partial information subject to legal proceedings.

•  Thirdly, the proscription project, due to the immateriality of the case made to date, has now to depend on undisclosed material whose integrity will escape effective scrutiny.

•  And significantly, a sizeable proportion of the information which that project is having to collate will have been supplied by dedicated lobby interests of unreliable credibility.

One such lobby outfit, We Believe in Israel, claims to "have called for, documented, and pursued [proscription] without fatigue", referring to "threatened employees", the association of Palestine Action with glorifiers of Hamas, Palestine Action as the "mask" in Britain for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. And, when moving on to brief on that proposed subsequent assignment, the faithful vow:

We at WBII are ready. Ready to provide evidence, testimony, coordination. Ready to remind Parliament that every delay costs not only time, but trust. That every minute Britain leaves the door open to the IRGC, it invites not only spies, but strategists of chaos.*

The prose may be ludicrously kitsch - such grandiloquence is bequeathed no doubt by "the grave satisfaction of duty fulfilled" - but highlights the pervasive pressure applied via lobbying whose objectives may be less concerned about the public interest than policy harmonisation with the affairs of a belligerent alien state. Indeed, alongside a considerable source of regular corporate funding - the genesis of which remains obscure - Cooper has the benefit of a six-figure subvention from a committed pro-Israel private donor to finance essential administrative overhead at her constituency office.

The Home Secretary will struggle to emerge from this 'terrorism' charade with reputation untainted.

* Citations from X: "Ban Palestine Action" @WeBelieveIsrael; Jun 21, 2025

For clarity, nothing articulated here should be considered as an evaluation of Palestine Action itself.