> That's the Mark Jenner who also spent years having a relationship with the environmental activists he was spying on.

It reminds me of a story about, after the 2015 terrorist attacks in France, a police group was created to infiltrate and spy on racists and anti-muslims hate groups. In one occasion, all the members were the cops...

On a similar note, the UK's longest ever trial[1] was a libel case about a leaflet that was discovered, 16 years later, to have been co-written by an undercover cop. One of the defendents unwittingly had a two year relationship with another undercover cop.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_case

I missed that detail when it came out! The whole thing was an extraordinary business.

>In one occasion, all the members were the cops...

Were those cops also undercover agents or genuine members?

I wasn't clear, all the cops were part of the same police group, working undercover to foil any racist/anti-muslim attack.

Well, after it was discovered, of course they would all have been undercover... even if they weren’t before, so to speak.

> This is another one of those stories that ought to be shocking but is unlikely to move the dial.

No. This is an outrage and the British people will rightly be outraged. The effects of this will and should be felt in the next election and beyond. Your sophisticated world-weary cynicism is counterproductive.

I'd like to be wrong, but I suspect that outside of people who are already in the labour movement, nobody will be talking about this next week let alone the next election. How much of a role did SDS play at the last election, when that was already known about?

It's been ""known"" for years that Special Branch helped murder people in Northern Ireland, and outside the republican community and the small subset of mainland "left" that pays attention, it makes no difference.

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/news-analysis/how...

(Far too many of the "british people" read rightwing press outlets which will minimise this and some other issue, probably Brexit, to rile up their readers to demand more not less authoritarianism)

The same police were doing the same things when Labour was in government. Also, Labour this time around want more money for the police, and we wouldn't really call Labour anti authoritarian, would we?

"The government always wins the election" is a very typical British saying and quite true.

I don't know what fantasy land you live in but it isn't the UK.

Almost nobody will give a shit.

Those that do won't remember come election time.

How will they be felt in the election, given the subject? The political group it was on behalf of has repaid the police by slashing police budgets and reducing their numbers, so we are currently in the position where the left wing are the party claiming to represent the police and are promising a rapid increase in police numbers, so they are unlikely to want to rock the boat too much against them politically at the moment, as that would muddy the messaging they are trying to get out.

Briton here. The vast majority of people will not care at all.

I object to the term 'cynicism'. Inductive reasoning, maybe. There's nothing inherent in the definition of a British person that necessarily includes apathy towards current affairs.

But most swans are white, there's nothing cynical about that, and similarly I say with no cynicism that most British people forgot about this five minutes after hearing/reading about it, if they heard or read about it at all.

The British people rarely express outrage at this kind of thing.

Yeah, I'm not really sure about that. I'm pretty politically engaged and I barely give a shit about this, considering the current clusterfuck that is politics in Britain.

Are there any countries in the world where politics is not like this?

Any?

Switzerland is resolutely boring and mostly has problems relating to "where do we keep all this foreign money". Germany seems to be doing well at the moment; I'd also list the Netherlands and the scandiavian countries as generally more sensible.

The option of "bonkers, but in a completely different way" politics is available in France, Belgium and Italy. You can also have "corrupt but extremely safe for the general public" in Singapore and Japan.

Should, perhaps, but as a Brit my reaction was just a complete lack of surprise. I'd be shocked if most people even remember this in a few month's time, if they care at all. I also can't see it billowing out in the election - the misdeeds of the police aren't necessarily translated onto the government, and a lot of people will have bigger things to worry about come election time.

>The effects of this will and should be felt in the next election and beyond.

Should? Yes. Will? No.

>Your sophisticated world-weary cynicism is counterproductive

Painfully naive idealism isn't any different. You have to work with reality, not deny it.

This won't happen. If you're a wagering man, i'll happily take the other side of a bet about it.

You obviously don't know the British.

This is a product of monarchy, and going to your parliment won't fix it.

Monarchy no, privilege yes. And of course the rightwing press.

> Special Branch enjoy secrecy and closeness to power

Yeah, but they operate in secret, which means there can't be any transparency, because that would reveal their operations and whatnot, and we wouldn't want that. Also, they're "just doing their jobs."

Literally what all short-sighted surveillance defenders always say in such cases.

> Oh, and disrupting the possibility of effective union action has been a priority of the government since the days of Thatcher

Long before that, but Mags is a popular person from recent memory to demonize, like her counterpart across the pond, Ron.