Rishi Sunak needs to move beyond shallow, headline-grabbing gimmicks

Editorial: Many of the proposed solutions to antisocial behaviour are ineffective, and each new ‘crackdown’ comes with a panoply of new offences

The PM needs to move beyond the soundbites (Alamy)

Every now and again, politicians rediscover what normal people really care about, which turns out to be – in addition to the obvious issues of the cost of living and the state of the health service – “antisocial behaviour”.

Sir Keir Starmer is performing a public service, therefore, in his recent emphasis on crime, and on “low-level” crime in particular. He was doing his job as leader of the opposition in exposing a gap in the prime minister’s “five promises”, which did not include law and order.

At one level, Rishi Sunak’s omission is understandable. It is true, as he said in the House of Commons on Wednesday, that crime has halved since David Cameron came to office 13 years ago – a long-term trend that ran through the previous 13 years of Labour government as well. This is one of those little-noticed – indeed scarcely believed – changes for the better in our national life for which we ought to be more grateful than we are.

However, people still care deeply about what Sir Keir said some people call “low-level” crime: “fly-tipping, off-road biking in rural areas, drugs”. In his speech on Thursday, the Labour leader spoke about a family in his inner-London constituency who say their lives are ruined by cannabis smoke that “creeps in from the street outside into their children’s bedroom”. He accused the Conservatives of being “soft on antisocial behaviour, soft on the crime that most affects working-class communities”.

Two days later, the prime minister has paid his opposite number the compliment of pre-announcing a “new crackdown on antisocial behaviour”, to be reannounced in the next few days. “Drinking alcohol at bus stops and war memorials is to be banned,” we are told in surprisingly specific terms. The briefing about Mr Sunak’s initiative echoes some of Sir Keir’s phrases and ideas. “Fly-tipping” is mentioned as one of the scourges the prime minister intends to fight, and he uses the same sort of language as Sir Keir in suggesting that offenders should be made to clean up their own graffiti, chewing gum and litter.

Both leaders are, of course, merely echoing Tony Blair, who invented antisocial behaviour orders (asbos) a quarter of a century ago, and who briefed journalists about his plans (never realised) to march yobs to cashpoints to pay their on-the-spot fines. Very little is new about this recurring story, although every few years new moral panics become fashionable. In Mr Blair’s time it was teenagers sniffing glue in crisp packets; today it is nitrous oxide (“laughing gas”) and the associated litter of metal canisters.

Many of the proposed solutions to antisocial behaviour are ineffective, and each new “crackdown” comes with a panoply of new offences and enforcement mechanisms that duplicate or replace existing ones. The New Labour-era asbos were replaced (in England and Wales) by criminal behaviour orders in 2014, but what was more significant at the time was the reduction in police numbers.

Mr Sunak makes much of the reversal of that trend since the last election, although the idea that people find a more visible uniformed presence on the streets reassuring has been complicated by the crisis of trust in the police described in Baroness Casey’s recent report.

In the end, antisocial behaviour is just an umbrella term for the breaking of the bonds of mutual respect that a decent society requires if it is to flourish. Preventing, curbing and punishing it is important, and political leaders ought to be aware of it all the time, not just when it bubbles up in focus groups. The response to it ought to be a sustained programme aimed at designing it out of public spaces, supported by consistent messages rather than a new “crackdown” every six months or so.

Sir Keir should be praised for pushing Mr Sunak into realigning himself with “the people’s priorities”, but both of them need to move beyond the soundbites and headline gimmicks.