Don’t fall for Labour’s criminal complacency

WITH one beady eye on Downing Street, Sir Keir Starmer is flashing some ankle to voters by talking tough on law and order.

In a major speech yesterday, he portrayed himself as someone who shared the public’s anxieties about – and was committed to confronting – a rising tide of offending.

‘Fighting crime,’ he said, ‘is a Labour cause.’ The former Director of Public Prosecution’s message couldn’t be clearer: Vote Starmer for safer streets.

Central to his mission is halving violence against women and girls. No one could disagree with such an important objective.

But how exactly will he achieve this – and measure its success? And given that Sir Keir struggles to define a woman, will he even know who the victims are?

And, tellingly, not a word about locking up more violent criminals for longer.

The blunt truth is that when it comes to trotting out empty platitudes and facile policy pledges that insult voters’ intelligence, Labour’s leader is second to none.

His actual record, as a human rights lawyer and a paid-up member of the trendy metropolitan Left, shows he is hardly the scourge of the criminal classes.

Two years ago, he backed a deeply misguided but successful campaign to block the deportation of dangerous Jamaican thugs, some of whom went on to commit further serious offences.

He has opposed tougher powers to search knife suspects and, as DPP, failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile and grooming gangs. Rather than make our communities safer, Sir Keir’s blind adherence to liberal ideology has made them less safe.

But we don’t need a crystal ball to predict the disastrous effects of a Labour government on law and order.

Just look at the horror show Mayor Sadiq Khan has presided over in London. A knifecrime epidemic of chilling proportions. A disgraced police force in meltdown. And women feeling less safe than ever before.

This is the grim reality of Labour: Weak on crime, weaker on the causes of crime.