By Elena Siniscalco
Keir Starmer has done well in following Tony Blair’s strategy of using crime as a slogan against the Conservatives. But he’ll also have to convince voters that Labour can deliver on it, writes Eliot Wilson
When it comes to prime ministerial quotations, Sir Tony Blair is very much in the premier league: “Education, education, education”, “the hand of history upon our shoulder”, “New Labour” itself. But the former PM showed an early, uncanny gift for distillation when he was shadow home secretary and in 1993 wrote about his approach in The New Statesman. The Labour Party had to be “tough on crime and tough on the underlying causes of crime”. The word “underlying” has fallen away over the past 30 years but the phrase remains potent.
It was a brilliant slogan because it bundled so many notions and nuances into one phrase. At a time when public confidence in the police’s ability to address everyday crime was falling and there seemed to be a disproportionate concern with the rights of criminals rather than victims, its opening, “tough on crime”, was a bold strike by the Labour Party to seize the law and order agenda from the Conservatives and adopt it as its own.
The follow-up, “tough on the causes of crime”, was meant to reassure liberals, like the Howard League for Penal Reform, and JUSTICE, that the party’s platform was more nuanced and progressive than a Tory hang-’em-and-flog-’em prospectus: New Labour understood the role of poverty, poor education and political disengagement in encouraging criminal behaviour. This skilful piece of triangulation, appealing to all sides of the debate, was hugely successful for Blair, defusing an issue on which they had traditionally tailed the Conservative and placing them squarely in the debate.
Now another Left-leaning lawyer, eager to end his party’s long period in opposition, is looking to law and order to give him an electoral advantage. Sir Keir Starmer should be very much in his comfort zone: from 2008 to 2013, he was director of public prosecutions, England’s senior prosecutor after the government law officers, and he had worked closely with the authorities in Northern Ireland on policing issues. Crime and punishment are as close as Labour’s leader gets to a home fixture.
Last week, visiting one of the Brexit fortresses of Stoke-on-Trent, Starmer made a speech which shone a light on his ideas for dealing with crime. It took place in the wake of the Casey Report into the Metropolitan Police. Laying out his party’s nostrums, Starmer relied heavily on targets which are ambitious at best: halving the level of knife crime and violence against women and girls, providing 13,000 extra police officers and driving public confidence in the police to its highest levels ever.
Starmer is not a fool. He knows two things: firstly, that crime is something which has a direct and substantial effect on the lives of voters, with everyone having a view on the matter and that view profoundly affecting the way they interact with the world in every other context. He also sees an opportunity. Building on the smash-and-grab raid which Blair used in the 90s, Starmer knows that the Conservatives have once again opened themselves to a vulnerability on crime. Conservative home secretaries may still like to pose with police officers in daring and dynamic dawn raids, but few of their tough sound bites have transformed the everyday experiences of voters.
Starmer knows he will get a hearing from the voters. It is nearing 15 years since we last had a Labour government, memories have blurred and softened, and dissatisfaction with the current administration is accompanied by curiosity about the alternatives. Starmer’s headline offer will attract a lot of support, even if it is only born of desperation. What catches the eye, however, also offers a hostage to fortune.
Targets are real, living beasts in politics, and sometimes not amenable even to the most skilful manipulation or interpretation. In short, sometimes it’s obvious you’ve failed. They also need a believable origin story. If a Labour England will have 13,000 more police officers, where will they come from? Who will they be? Will they be honest and ethical? Who will pay for their training and salaries?
This is part of a wider project which faces Sir Keir Starmer. When the general election finally comes, probably in the second half of next year, he will have to engage in a conversation with the electorate, in which he will show what he wants to do and how he will achieve it. That will be the final test. The voters will have to believe him.
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