Where is the party of law and order?

No government can preside over rising levels of serious crime and fail to be punished by the electorate. So the latest figures showing a sharp increase in violent assaults and burglaries should sound the alarm bells in No 10. Theresa May is already seeing support beginning to haemorrhage as a result of her Brexit policy. To compound that with a growing public sense that the police are losing control of the streets is potentially calamitous.

In addition, the Justice Department is about to embark on a new initiative to reduce the prison population. This will be justified on the grounds that some offenders should not be in jail; and while that may be true, the real reason is a Treasury squeeze on the department’s budget. It is the Government’s duty to provide prison places for those sentenced by the courts, not circumvent justice on cost grounds.

But the first principle of policing is the prevention of crime; and for that, order needs to be maintained and offences properly investigated. It is hardly surprising that crimes like burglary and street assaults are going up if the miscreants feel they will never be caught because there are no police on the streets or they will not go to prison.

Offences involving knives or sharp instruments rose by 16 per cent and homicides by 12 per cent from the previous year. The use of guns was also up, though by a smaller amount than before. Robberies have risen by 30 per cent, a sure sign that criminals are acting with greater boldness. The fact that the police reduced the use of stop and search under political pressure, not least from Theresa May when she was home secretary, must be a factor here.

The Home Office has responded to rising knife crime with a new strategy focusing on the impact of illegal drug markets on offending. But with cocaine now as easy to order as a pizza, the police are finding it increasingly difficult to obtain the intelligence on the ground needed to shut them down. In any case, there are not enough officers on the streets in high-crime areas.

The Conservatives lost control of crime in the Nineties and were punished at the 1997 general election when Tony Blair turned Labour into the law-and-order party. Mrs May should be grateful the Opposition is in the hands of people who have never put fighting crime high on their agenda. The Tories cannot be seen to be doing the same.