It was one of those I wasn’t sure I was really seeing, at first. Was it a dramatisation? A car – a taxi – stopped in the middle of the Strand in London. The occupants, both Asian, stood surrounded by protesters clad in hi-viz vests and draped with flags, who pushed and jostled against them, demanding that they get back in the car. The scene was ugly, fractious.

Earlier, another scene that seem disconnected from reality. A group of police, walking into Charing Cross Police Station, as protesters, again in hi-viz vests, jeered and yellow smoke billowed. A flare had been thrown into the doorway, the officers disappearing into the smoke.

It’s the kind of thing that you expect to see at a time of regime change, or popular revolution, authorities humbled and seemingly powerless to stop a mob.

Yet this was London, 2019. A Saturday afternoon in February.

With weeks to go before a potential ‘No Deal’ Brexit, and a recorded surge in Far Right extremism, it is worrying to see the Metropolitan Police so cowed in dealing with a small group of protesters that has shown a predilection for violence and intimidation.

In talking to activists who witnessed these events at Charing Cross and the Strand, I was appalled to hear that the occupants of the taxi were shocked at the lack of police action in moving protesters away from them.

Even more disturbing was the excuse given to one activist by a police officer –forces in the area were too busy guarding the police station from the hi-viz mob to expend too many officers at the Strand.

This is not a mass movement we are talking about. There is no coherent message.

Those calling themselves the ‘Yellow Vests’ can only muster, at most, around 100-150 individuals at any one time, with their numbers remaining stable since after Christmas. Many are known individuals with a long history of involvement in Far Right organisations, some with criminal convictions.

Their demands, if they can be called that, relate to a slurry of Islamophobic and anti-government conspiracy theories, with references to the American QAnon phenomenon. They are obsessed with supposed paedophilia at all levels of government or media. They talk about Far Right obsessions such as ‘Cultural Marxism’ and ‘Antifa’. They are never seen without their smartphones aloft, trying to capture footage of their supposed ‘enemies’ for dissemination in one of any number of Facebook groups set up for their cause.

These are categorically not what you’d call ‘freedom fighters’, nor do they appear to have an endgame in mind.

Yet, they appear to have been given free rein to harass and intimidate Londoners going about their business. Police seem reticent to step in and make arrests, and it is only a matter of time before someone gets seriously hurt by the group.

This seems odd, as a glance at protests taking place in London over the last thirty years shows the police using a number of tactics to corral and contain protesters – especially against the left-wing – that simply aren’t being employed here.

Without delving into conspiracy theories myself, serious questions need to be raised about why this group are not being handled the same way as others.

As the United Kingdom heads towards perhaps the single greatest social and political turning point of the last half-century, with warnings of civil unrest being issued by multiple security agencies, we should all be extremely concerned at the inaction of England’s most prominent police force in securing public order in the heart of London.