The former MP for Bournemouth West, Conor Burns, has said he thought the response to a protest in the town centre looked ‘over the top’.

Speaking on GB News Conor Burns said: “There are big questions about [the policing]. In the end, it was two relatively small groups engaged in a sort of standoff with each other.

“Five different forces descending on the town centre, to the town hall? I have to say local residents will be delighted to see police in Bournemouth Town Centre.

“We've been trying for years to get the police onto the beat [there] to deal with the aggressive begging and the drinking and the drug dealing and so on.

“But I did think it looked a little bit over the top.

“There's trouble all the time in Northern Ireland. The police in Northern Ireland are policing an imperfect peace with deep remaining sectarian divisions between a very divided community in Northern Ireland.

“I think there's sometimes a concern that there is an elevation of some of this by the police reaction and by political reaction.

“And it is really, really important in all this, so the police are even handed and appropriate in their response to all crimes, to all disturbances and to all protests, because it eats at the integrity of the police if the public come to believe that there are different rules for different people in society.

“I've seen some of these demonstrations in London, and I've seen things chanted, things said, placards waved, that I would imagine most people looking over would think were incitement to hatred, or indeed even violence, and the police have been standing observing that.

“But go back to the height of the Covid restrictions. We had the former head of the Metropolitan Police taking the knee with officers without too much social distancing going on, and yet clamping down amazingly strongly on ordinary members of the public going about their business, but allegedly not following the rather draconian restrictions.

“If the public starts to believe that there is one set of rules for one person and another for them, then you start to gnaw away at policing by consent.”

WATCH ABOVE.