British interior minister Suella Braverman sparked outrage on Thursday for accusing police of double standards before a politically charged pro-Palestinian rally on Armistice Day, the latest incendiary rhetoric from the hardline Conservative.
Braverman, 43, suggested that officers "play favourites" when policing protests, claiming they largely ignored "pro-Palestinian mobs" during massive recent demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war.
The comments, seen as red meat to the right wing of the Tory party, come after she described the rallies calling for a ceasefire in Gaza as "hate marches" and claimed some people were homeless as a "lifestyle choice".
Her words have heightened speculation she is positioning herself for a future Tory leadership contest or that they are a deliberate ploy by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's party to appeal to right-wingers before the next general election.
Sunak has described the planned march in London on Saturday -- a day when Britain honours its war dead -- as "provocative and disrespectful" and has tried to pressure the Metropolitan Police into banning it.
Police have said the march in support of Palestinians under Israeli bombardment following Hamas's October 7 attacks does not meet the legal threshold for requesting a government order to stop it going ahead.
Tensions between London's Met Police and Sunak appeared to ease on Wednesday after an emergency meeting at which the force's chief, Mark Rowley, confirmed the march would not clash with remembrance events for the country's war dead.
But Braverman, writing in The Times daily on Thursday, was scathing about the Met's policing of different groups.
"Right-wing and nationalist protesters who engage in aggression are rightly met with a stern response yet pro-Palestinian mobs displaying almost identical behaviour are largely ignored, even when clearly breaking the law," she wrote.
The outspoken Braverman -- who quit under Sunak's short-lived predecessor Liz Truss for using her personal email for government business -- added she did not believe the protests were "merely a cry for help for Gaza".
She said she believed they were more about an "assertion of primacy by certain groups -- particularly Islamists".
"There is a perception that senior police officers play favourites when it comes to protesters.
"I have spoken to serving and former police officers who have noted this double standard," she added.
Tom Winsor, a former police watchdog chief, said the home secretary's comments went too far and were contrary to the principle of police independence.
- 'Crosses the line' -
"It's unusual. It's unprecedented. It's contrary to the spirit of the ancient constitutional settlement with the police," Winsor told BBC radio.
"By applying pressure to the commissioner of the Met in this way, I think that crosses the line."
The main opposition Labour party's home affairs spokeswoman, Yvette Cooper, said Braverman was "out of control" and "encouraging extremists on all sides".
London has seen large demonstrations on four successive weekends since the Hamas attacks in southern Israel on October 7 which Israel says left 1,400 people dead, mostly civilians. They also took 240 hostages.
Since then, Israel has relentlessly bombarded Gaza and sent in ground troops, with the Hamas-run health ministry in the Palestinian territory saying more than 10,000 people have been killed.
The Met police have made almost 200 arrests since the attacks, either for hate crimes or incidents linked to the protests, while anti-Semitism cases have surged.
Labour frontbencher Jonathan Reynolds told Sky News that Sunak, seen as more moderate than Braverman, should sack her if he had not approved her comments before publication.
But her fondness for stoking so-called culture wars may prove useful to the Tories as they try to overhaul huge deficits to Labour in opinion polls before an election that must be held by January 2025.
Braverman, whose Indian-origin parents emigrated to Britain in the 1960s, recently described multiculturalism as a "misguided dogma".
She has also attacked the United Nations Refugee Convention and warned that Britain faces a "hurricane" of immigration, and once famously criticised liberals as the "tofu-eating wokerati".
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