By the time we have lost our freedoms, we will have forgotten what they were.

I don’t often read something in the press and entirely agree with it, but an article in The Guardian today by George Monbiot seems to me to sum up perfectly the dangers to democracy in the Government’s approach to terrorism. Citing the decreased choice available at general elections — the main political parties now largely agree on the main areas of policy — he notes that this leaves the public with protest as its only route to express discontent with government policy. However, laws which have been passed with the explicit assurance that they will not be used to suppress legitimate dissent have promptly been used to do precisely that.

We are often told that the passage of laws like this is dangerous because one day it might facilitate the seizure of power by an undemocratic government. But that is to miss the point. Their passage is the seizure of power. Protest is inseparable from democracy: every time it is restricted, the state becomes less democratic. Democracies such as ours will come to an end not with the stamping of boots and the hoisting of flags, but through the slow accretion of a thousand dusty codicils.