British COVID ‘Rule of Six’ is Enforceable by Law
The Claim
The British Government rule that no more than six people are allowed to gather together for any reason, publicly or privately, is illegal and unenforceable.
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Emerging story
Due to the COVID crisis, the British parliament passed the Coronavirus Act 2020, which grants themselves emergency powers to handle the crisis. One of the more controversial actions taken by the British government is the ‘Rule of Six’ which prohibits any more than six individuals from gathering together for any reason, publicly or privately. Since the law went into effect on Monday, September 14th, claims have circulated virally on social media claiming that the law is either illegal, violating the right to assembly, or at the very least impossible to enforce since it would require a police or surveillance presence inside every home in the nation to prevent families from congregating.
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar’s investigation into this claim reveals it to be false. Technically, any law that any government enacts is a legal law, since it is the government itself which is responsible for deciding whether a law is legal or not. Thus, by granting itself emergency powers, a government can theoretically enable itself to do whatever it likes. In a democracy with separation of powers, it is slightly more difficult to pull off such a move, although not much difficult: so long as the legislative, executive, and judicial branches are in agreement, the rest is the same. The citizens of the nation have the option to elect new members of the government if they disagree with the actions of the old ones, but almost exclusively, they only are able to elect individuals from a pool that their nations’ political parties have put before them as options. Furthermore, political parties are only able to support candidates who are already supported by the parties’ donors. As such, when you look at the broader picture, there seems to be little wiggle room for individuals that wish to claim that their government is enacting a law that they disagree with— if that complaint runs contrary to the wishes of political donors, it will almost assuredly fall on deaf ears.
However much the claim at hand may be technically false, however, it is true that enforcing the Rule of Six would require a massive and Orwellian surveillance state—far greater in scale and scope even than the one that already exists in the UK. As such, as with other such laws, there will probably be millions of instances of breaking this rule, and the rule will in turn be selectively enforced in order to attempt to create a climate of fear and submission among the citizenry. In reality, people can probably go about their daily life so long as they avoid contact with law enforcement and keep all social contact deadly secret. But it is strange to wonder how long such circumstances might last in the birthplace of modern democracy.
