Labour is hardening its stance on crime – it will pay off

Labour will make law and order a big issue in its campaign for the May local elections, writes Andrew Grice

Keir Starmer and his party are ahead of the Tories on crime in some polls (Getty)

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, told the Parliamentary Labour Party recently how, when she knocked on doors in her Castleford constituency, people raised antisocial behaviour and drug dealing rather than Downing Street parties. Yet that isn’t necessarily bad news for Labour.

Some opinion pollsters now show Labour ahead of the Tories on crime, traditionally an issue on which the Tories enjoy a lead. Labour rightly senses a Tory vulnerability amid rising crime, public concern over prosecution and conviction rates for offences such as rape and a backlog in the courts.

Boris Johnson and Priti Patel have been ticked off by the statistics watchdog for claiming that crime has fallen by 14 per cent; when fraud and computer misuse are included, it has risen by that amount since before the pandemic. It was a Labour mayor, Sadiq Khan, who ousted the under-performing Metropolitan Police commissioner Cressida Dick, leaving a populist home secretary in Patel flat-footed.