Sarah Helm learned on Saturday that she will not face a criminal investigation over a social media post that appeared to endorse Palestine Action, the group the UK has proscribed as a “terrorist” organisation. Helm, an author and journalist married to National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell, had faced a day of uncertainty after the Metropolitan Police said the post was “being assessed to determine whether any further police investigation may be required.”
That assessment is now closed. A Metropolitan Police spokesperson said officers had examined the post and concluded that it “did not meet the criminal threshold. No further police action will be taken.”
For Helm, the decision ends a scrutiny that began with a single sentence. Writing on X on Thursday, she posted: “God help us authors who support Palestine and Palestine Action.” The comment came amid a publishing dispute that has put writers, and the money they earn from their work, at the centre of the country’s debate over the banned group.
That dispute involves the novelist Sally Rooney, an Irish author published by Faber. The publisher said this week that Rooney could not sell her books in the UK after she announced plans to use her royalties to support Palestine Action. “Current legislation in the UK has led to circumstances where Faber cannot pass on UK earnings to Sally Rooney for her work. To sell a writer’s work and not be able to pass on earnings is an unconscionable situation for a publisher,” Faber said in a statement on its website. The publisher added that, “in full agreement with Sally,” it had decided it could no longer supply her works in the UK in any format, though it would continue to sell her work in other countries and regions.
Helm’s post drew an immediate and sharp reaction. The Campaign Against Antisemitism, a British NGO, responded on X that the comment was “gobsmacking” and that “clearly, the police need to investigate and Ms Helm must face the full force of the law.” That call for investigation is what police have now declined to act on.
Meanwhile, the government moved to distance itself from the remarks. When asked for comment on Friday, a government spokesperson said Helm’s comments did “not represent the government in any capacity.” Helm’s husband, Jonathan Powell, serves as national security adviser to Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
The case sits within a broader legal landscape that has been taking shape since July 2025, when UK lawmakers voted to proscribe Palestine Action as a “terrorist” organisation. The group challenged the government’s decision, but the Court of Appeal ruled in June that the proscription was lawful.
The consequences of that ban have been felt widely by ordinary people. Amnesty International says more than 3,500 people have been arrested in the UK for allegedly supporting Palestine Action since it was banned last year, many of them for holding up placards. Against that backdrop, the police decision that one post by the wife of a senior adviser does not cross the criminal threshold is likely to draw continued attention to how the law is applied.
For now, the immediate question has been resolved: no further police action will be taken against Helm. But the underlying tensions, between publishers and the law, between writers and the groups they wish to support, and between campaigners who demanded investigation and police who found no case to answer, remain unresolved.