What’s behind Sunak’s latest crime crackdown?
The Prime Minister was in Essex this morning and unveiled his much-briefed anti-social behavior plan. In recent weeks, he and Keir Starmer have given a taste of what’s to come in next year’s general election by trading punches on a range of policy areas. Last week Starmer gave a big law and order speech; Today it was Sunak’s turn to answer. The Tory leader said his plan – with his headline-grabbing plan to ban nitrous oxide – could be summed up in three “buckets”: more police powers, a zero-tolerance approach to drugs and a focus on the urgency that offenders need to fix the damage they’ve done faster. He told the audience how much he detested the “scourge” of nitrous oxide canisters on the floor in public and promised tougher fines for fly-tipping and graffiti.
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It was the kind of politically uncontroversial bashing of anti-social behavior that we’ve seen since Tony Blair’s days: a fact demonstrated by Labor’s decision to focus on the implementation, not the substance, of Sunak’s plan. The opposition was quick to back a proposal to ban nitrous oxide yesterday, but accused the government of suppressing its own proposals. Steve Reed, the shadow justice secretary, criticized ministers for piloting plans for “hotspot” police and law enforcement areas in only 16 parts of the country, rather than making them nationwide. The race between the two parties to “get tougher on crime and tougher on the causes of crime” is a sign of what we can expect in the forthcoming local elections, where Labor is reported to start campaigning this Thursday.
The problem for the Tories here was illustrated by the response the Prime Minister’s comments received from voters. Sunak was speaking at one of his irregular “PM Connect” events — a “soapbox” tour of town hall-style question-and-answer sessions billed as an opportunity to meet constituents and hear their grievances. And Sunak certainly heard them, with the key takeaway today being how dissatisfied voters are when it comes to the way police are handling existing crimes. One voter said the non-emergency police number was “the most frustrating thing in the world”. Another told Sunak that nitrous oxide is “the least of your problems” and that he has reported people for using harder drugs in public, but “you don’t know if it’s getting into the system or not”. It points to the broader problem facing Conservatives: after 13 years in office, why don’t people feel their streets are safer?
Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, would like to point out that overall crime, excluding fraud and computer abuse, has gone down over the past decade. But while ministers can cite statistical triumphs, it’s this broader sense of discontent that will be harder to shake when arguing that Conservatives should run public services better.