I disapprove of what you spray, but I will defend to the death your right to spray it, as Voltaire didn't say. Britain’s High Court struck a blow for the values of the open society by ruling that the government acted unlawfully in banning Palestine Action as a terrorist organization after the direct-action protest group broke into a Royal Air Force base and spray-painted two planes. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood says the government will appeal the decision; it would be wiser to retreat gracefully.

You don’t need to sympathize with Palestine Action’s methods or aims to see the ban as an example of draconian state overreach. The group gained national prominence with its June 2025 break-in at Brize Norton, the country’s largest RAF base, in Oxfordshire northwest of London. It was a quixotic stunt reminiscent of Citizen Smith, a fictional urban guerilla and leader of the Tooting Popular Front in the 1970s television sitcom of the same name. Days later, then-Home Secretary Yvette Cooper proscribed Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act.

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