Michael Howard has in the past day or so moved to establish a strong Tory line on policing and crime.
It seems interesting as he was after all the Home Secretary who had the wind taken out of his sails by a young shadow minister who promised to be “Tough on crime, Tough on the causes of crime” at a time when Howard had managed to cut police numbers. That young shadow minister was obviously Tony Blair.
Strong Law and Order has always been a traditional Tory policy and it seemed a bit of a coup to have Tory position usurped by a Labour government. The great irony with the much lambasted David Blunkett is that the Home Secretary is extremely tough on crime, (much to the distaste of many on the Labour back bench) and as a result has had Conservatives chomping at the bit - they’re favourite path for criticizing Labour has largely been blocked.
However Howard has decided that he’s going to tackle the paperwork which the Labour government has forced upon Her Majesty’s Constabulary. I’ll be honest, this does seem to be a rather impotent line of policy from Howard, even ignoring my own misgivings about his leadership, but it is indicative of the astounding success of New Labour’s tactics in refusing the Conservatives room for maneuver on this issue.
Blair’s government has done such a great job of taking a tough line on crime that Howard is reduced to vainly poking at a cloud of “political correctness” and attacking paperwork used to guard Human Rights.
As a chief inspector on Newsnight noted, filing in a form for a stop and search, a police power granted under the PACE act that would normally be subject only to a set of guidelines which carry little penalty for contravention, adds a rather insignificant amount of paperwork to the average bobby’s workload.
Let some people balk at Blunkett’s hard line, the fact of the matter is that most of the opposition is from the people in low-crime areas. The people who are affected most by crime policy such as those living in the Middlesborough council estates shown on Newsnight yesterday evening, are the ones calling for increased police powers and by playing the ‘tough’ card, Blair’s government has blocked what looks to be one of the last real theatres for policy debate between Labour and the Conservatives.
The only real area of debate left open to the Tories for the next election (as a result of almost a year of opportunism and ya-boo politics from the leadership) is Europe and their party still can’t form a consensus on that issue.
There’s a reason the odds for a Labour win next General Election aren’t enticing me over at Ladbrokes.co.uk. It’s because in the time leading up to the election, even with my miniscule HSBC current account interest rates, I’d make more money keeping my tenner in the bank than I would if Blair pulled through for a historic 3rd term.
Later
John
Posted by John Swaine at August 11, 2004 01:11 AM | TrackBack