How 2025 became the year the UK exported its weapons abroad and imported its repression at home
There is something deeply wrong in the United Kingdom’s current legal posture. Not because the law is unclear, and not because the situation is unusually complex, but because the government is enforcing its most severe powers in one direction while quietly neglecting its clearest obligations in another.
On the one hand, people are being arrested under terrorism legislation for expression, symbolism, and protest. On the other, the UK continues to license and support arms exports despite sustained international concern that those weapons are being used in ways that may violate international humanitarian law.
These two facts are not unrelated. They are the same problem viewed from opposite ends of power.
The question is not whether the UK is acting legally in the narrowest sense. The question is why it is choosing to enforce one set of laws with ferocity while treating another set as discretionary, even though the latter were designed precisely to prevent the harms now being protested.
When the law is applied selectively, legality becomes theatre.
The Situation the Government Wants to Separate
The UK government would prefer these issues to be discussed separately.
First, there is national security. Terrorism law. Proscription. The need to maintain order.
Second, there is foreign policy. Arms exports. Strategic alliances. Diplomatic complexity.
This separation is politically convenient. It is also artificial.
The protests being suppressed are not abstract. They are directed at specific policies, specific supply chains, and specific decisions made by the UK state. They exist because citizens are pointing to a risk that the law already recognises.
The government’s response has not been to answer that risk. It has been to criminalise the act of pointing to it.
That inversion is the heart of the problem.
What the Arms Trade Treaty Actually Requires
The Arms Trade Treaty is not aspirational. It is binding. The UK helped draft it and routinely cites it as evidence of its commitment to a rules-based international order.
Under the treaty, the UK must not authorise arms exports if it knows, or should reasonably know, that the weapons could be used to commit war crimes or serious violations of international humanitarian law.
The key word is risk.
The treaty does not require certainty. It does not require a final court ruling. It does not require proof that a specific UK-made component was used in a specific incident.
It requires a responsible assessment of whether there is a credible risk, based on available information.
At present, that information includes repeated warnings from United Nations officials, extensive reporting by international human-rights organisations, and ongoing legal scrutiny at the international level. This is not fringe material. It is mainstream, institutional concern.
The idea that this does not meet the treaty’s risk threshold is not persuasive. It is evasive.
The UK’s Own Rules Are Even Clearer
If international obligations can be brushed aside rhetorically, domestic ones cannot.
The UK’s Consolidated Criteria on Arms Exports are explicit. Export licences must be refused where there is a clear risk that the equipment might be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian law.
Again, the language is precautionary. Again, it is designed to err on the side of restraint. Again, it places the burden on the state to justify continued supply in the face of credible concern.
These criteria were written to prevent exactly this situation. They exist so that the UK cannot later say it did not know, or that the signals were ambiguous, or that responsibility lay elsewhere.
And yet, in practice, they are treated as flexible guidelines rather than enforceable constraints.
This is not because the law is unclear. It is because enforcing it would be inconvenient.
Terrorism Law: The Path of Least Resistance
Now contrast this with the application of terrorism legislation.
Once an organisation is proscribed, the threshold for criminal liability drops dramatically. Expression of support, symbolic association, or even perceived solidarity can become an offence. No proof of harm is required. No causal link to violence must be demonstrated.
This makes terrorism law extremely attractive to governments under pressure. It allows rapid action, strong optics, and the avoidance of substantive political debate.
Most importantly, it moves the spotlight away from state decisions and onto individual behaviour.
Instead of answering whether arms exports should be suspended, the government asks whether protest has crossed a legal line. Instead of defending policy, it manages dissent.
This is not what terrorism law was designed to do. But it is what it is being used for.
The Absurdity at the Centre of the Response
Consider the situation as it now stands.
The UK claims there is insufficient certainty to suspend arms exports, despite widespread international concern and explicit legal thresholds based on risk.
At the same time, it claims sufficient certainty to arrest people for non-violent expression, despite no evidence that their actions pose any direct threat to life or safety.
In other words, the law demands near-absolute certainty before the state restrains itself, but requires almost none before it restrains its citizens.
That is an inversion of democratic logic.
If risk justifies arrest, it also justifies suspension. If uncertainty excuses continued supply, it should excuse protest.
The fact that neither symmetry exists tells us everything we need to know.
Legal Cherry-Picking as Governance
What we are witnessing is not the rule of law. It is legal cherry-picking.
The government is choosing the laws that:
Are easiest to enforce
Protect strategic and economic interests
Deflect scrutiny from policy decisions
And deprioritising the laws that:
Impose restraint on state power
Carry economic and diplomatic costs
Require uncomfortable admissions
This is not accidental. It is structural.
Terrorism law flows downward. Arms control law flows upward. One disciplines citizens. The other disciplines the state.
Only one is being taken seriously.
Why This Cannot Be Defended as Neutral Security Policy
Defenders of the current approach often argue that these are separate domains. That terrorism law is about safety, while arms exports are about foreign policy.
But this collapses under scrutiny.
If protest is being criminalised because it targets defence supply chains, diplomatic relationships, or strategic partners, then foreign policy has already entered the domestic security frame.
The government cannot claim neutrality while using its strongest legal tools to protect the consequences of its own policy choices.
Suppressing dissent does not resolve legal risk. It conceals it.
What an Honest Government Would Do
An honest government faced with this situation would do one of three things.
It would suspend support pending review, acknowledging that the risk threshold has been met.
Or it would impose strict, transparent conditions and accept responsibility for monitoring and enforcement.
Or it would admit openly that economic and strategic interests are being prioritised over human-rights commitments, and invite democratic judgment on that choice.
What it would not do is pretend there is no choice while criminalising those who insist that there is.
This Is Not About Ideology. It Is About Integrity.
This argument does not depend on one’s views about Israel, Palestine, protest tactics, or geopolitics.
It depends on whether the UK applies its own laws consistently.
A state that enforces restraint only on its citizens, and never on itself, is not governed by law. It is governed by convenience.
That is what makes this moment dangerous.
Not because of one conflict, or one set of protests, but because it establishes a model of governance in which the law is no longer a constraint on power, but a tool for managing it.
Simply Put: The Law Is Being Used Backwards
The UK is currently punishing people for warning about a risk it is legally obliged to assess, while refusing to act on that risk because doing so would be costly.
That is not security. It is avoidance.
The Arms Trade Treaty and the Consolidated Criteria exist to prevent complicity. Terrorism law exists to prevent violence.
Using the latter to silence those invoking the former is not only absurd. It is an admission that the government prefers repression to accountability.
And history is unambiguous about how that choice is judged.
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