Britain 'on brink of becoming police state under Labour'

 Britain is on the brink of becoming a "police state" with traditional liberties under threat, the Freedom Association has warned. The campaign group is alarmed by plans to curtail jury trials, phase in a ban on buying tobacco, and end trail hunting. It is also concerned by potential delays to local elections and "confiscatory" taxation.

David Campbell Bannerman, the chairman of the Freedom Association, warned: "Liberty is no more than a flickering light in Britain's police state." Claiming that the public are "appalled" at seeing "people arrested, questioned and imprisoned for innocuous and often completely legitimate comments" made online, he warned: "State power is being extended almost by the day." He described the plans to reduce the use of juries as "another outrageous attack on liberty".

Urging the Government not to press ahead with a trail hunting ban, he said: "The state now wants to end hundreds of years of tradition by forbidding trail hunting.

"Trail hunting was a classic British compromise after a total ban was avoided. It kept the tradition and ceremony without the objective being to kill foxes.

"But this latest bout of Government extremism means no longer will riders in red coats and packs of hounds meet outside country pubs to the delight of crowds of locals, boost the takings of landlords and then go plunging off into the countryside.

"The poor dogs will be put down, horses put out to pasture, and a harmless yet picturesque part of rural life will be rubbed out by the flinty Puritans who now rule the land."

Attacking the Government's plan to phase out smoking by gradually increasing the age at which tobacco can be bought, he said: "A decade from now under this absurd measure, a 27-year-old will be able to buy a packet of fags, but a 26-year-old will not.

"Shopkeepers on pain of huge fines are meant to police this law, somehow divining whether mature adults are old enough to make a purchase."

Reform UK MP Sarah Pochin said: "Keir Starmer's Labour is presiding over a terrifying expansion of authoritarian policies more suited to a banana republic than the cradle of democracy."

A Conservative spokesman said: "This Labour Government is trampling all over the lives of the ordinary public."

"Labour ministers are undermining democracy and restricting our freedoms, treating the public with contempt. Only the Conservatives will ensure the British people's rights are properly respected."

A Labour source said: "Only Labour have a plan for patriotic national renewal focused on security, respect and opportunity. We are taking the fair choices needed to protect economic stability, reform public services and invest in the future. There's much more to do, but we won't rest until every part of Britain feels better off."