Toll is a wake-up call

THE Tories have been in denial about the rise in serious crime. But the terrible death toll on our streets from knife crime should be a wake-up call even to this complacent Government.

There have been 48 deaths in London this year that are being treated as murder. Most are from knife crime, some from guns.

The Tory knee-jerk response is to call for more stop and search, to ask the internet companies to stop videos glorifying violence and to blame Labour’s London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

But random stop and search has never worked, although properly targeted stop and search can play its part. In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio got rid of it altogether and crime went down. The internet giants do have a role to play in the type of material they allow. But that’s true of all crime, from online fraud to terrorism.

The Government must do more than have a cosy chat with the companies that allow it.

And blaming Labour’s Mayor is really low. The Metropolitan Police, like almost every force in the country, has suffered huge cuts in funding.

We need to learn from what works. In Scotland, they have cut knife crime dramatically by treating it as a public health problem. As well as recruiting more police, this is what Labour will do in government.