Groundhog Day for tired, tested policies
DOYOU suppose it’s Groundhog Day at No 10? Or do you imagine they really are expecting us to buy the line about yet ANOTHER crackdown on anti-social behaviour – because that initiative comes along as regularly as England fail on football tournament penalty shoot-outs.
These supposed get tough policies have been promised for decades. For instance, let’s go back to 1998 to remember this pledge: “I announce today that we will be introducing targeted policing to cut burglary and crime.” That was former PM Tony Blair a quarter of a century ago, and that hollow and meaningless drivel delivered precisely nothing.
A series of copy-cat schemes has subsequently been announced, usually to great fanfare, but all have failed to hit the right note. Now, with the promises of restorative justice, yobs and hooligans clad in yellow tabards cleaning up graffiti and repairing broken bus shelters and drug dealers being driven from our street corners, we are meant to believe it all over again. The blast of the dog whistle is so deafening, pooches will be roused across the nation!
This can be conveniently filed alongside other “new” initiatives in areas such as waiting lists for the NHS, improved education and a plan that actually does tackle the migrant crisis.
Don’t get me wrong for a second: antisocial behaviour is without doubt a key issue for politicians to address and it has been allowed to blight too much of this country. No one should have to tolerate this kind of behaviour and we have the right to feel secure in our own homes without the fear of harassment or wanton law breaking outside our front doors.
Equally, we shouldn’t have to wade through discarded needles or pick our way over piles of laughing gas canisters after they’ve been dumped on our streets.
It is not the policy that rankles, rather the indisputable fact we have heard it so many times before.
In 2018 the then PM Theresa May promised she would do “whatever it takes” as she launched a “blitz on crime” which, in truth, was remarkably similar to the “blitz on crime” she’d announced a few years earlier as Home Secretary.
A few years on and it was the turn of then Home Secretary Priti Patel who assured us she was ready to “get tough” with low-level crimes by introducing the scheme for convicted offenders being made to clean up graffiti and litter. Yes, that was the very same idea we were fed last week.
We’ve also been told there’d be “an end to the revolving door of justice”, “the victim will be at the heart of what
we will do”, and “the message needs to be heard loud and clear by lawbreakers across the land”.
And lo, last week it was the turn of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to talk tough – and your heart had to sink when, in the build up to the grand policy unveiling, the normally savvy Michael Gove seemed to fall into the same trap.
Last weekend, explaining the need to address anti-social behaviour rapidly, otherwise an area can quickly decline he referenced “the broken windows theory” which holds you must fix the first broken
pane immediately, or it starts apace. The only sane reflection on this litany of broken promises has to be that they have all palpably not worked. Otherwise, there’d be no need to dust off these remedies which have clearly failed, and that also means we deserve better.
Better policies laid out by better politicians who realise we’re far smarter than they often take us for, and won’t blithely swallow the next worn-out, retread of a failed initiative.
Otherwise what can we look forward to next week: a Cones Hotline?