[michaelt]

> Or is it for "other" types of protests?

There was a BLM protest that pulled down a statue of a slave trader in Bristol. Honestly, pretty much every elected politician would have been OK with that. But then there was another protest in London where some critical graffiti was sprayed on a statue of Winston Churchill. Despite his faults, Churchill is an extremely popular figure; no elected politician would support statues of him being damaged or removed.

So a bill to stop protests damaging statues seemed like a good idea to them.

From the perspective of civil servants and the police, if you offer them more power of course they'll say yes. Who wouldn't want more power, after all?

But getting the bill through the bureaucracy took time, and by the time it was ready the most recent protest-policing news was a police crack-down on a candle-lit vigil for a woman who'd been raped and murdered just days before... by a policeman.