'We are coming after you,' promised Priti Patel last week at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester. The ‘you’ being criminals, of course; and not voters in marginal seats. Although it was glaringly obvious her government’s justice reforms had been primed and road-tested for maximum impact in any forthcoming election.
It was chilling to hear a home secretary, especially a self-described ‘daughter of immigrants [who] needs no lectures from the north London metropolitan liberal elite’, promising to end ‘freedom of movement of people once and for all’. Law and order, Patel reminded the Tory party faithful, was ‘central to our DNA as Conservatives’. To that end, she promised £20m on tackling ‘county lines’ drug gangs as well as £10m to arm police officers with even more Tasers.
There’s nothing new about playing politics with the public’s real or perceived concerns about crime (or immigration). It’s more than a quarter of a century since Tony Blair, then shadow home secretary, coined
