It is easy to be cynical. When Tony Blair was Prime Minister, he once sent a memo to his team demanding ‘eye-catching initiatives’ and adding: ‘I should be personally associated with as much of this as possible.’ The Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is on manoeuvres. The speculation that Keir Starmer will be replaced as Prime […]
Much to the surprise of foreigners, Britain has never had a national police force, relying instead on 40-odd local forces since the 1960s, mostly covering one or two counties, but some bigger. Mark Rowley, who runs the Met, is unhappy. Earlier this month, he called for all existing forces to be merged into about 12-15 […]
Some issues in public life should be very easy: safeguarding children as an absolute priority is one of them. Avoiding heaping shame on the innocent is another. The longstanding principles of justice in our country ought to make both ideas apparent. And yet, as the Telegraph sets out, in some parts of our country those charged […]
Here’s something of a paradox: to judge by the commentary, Keir Starmer’s response to the recent public disorder has been pretty effective. The riots seemed to have burned themselves out, the courts are making high-profile examples of those involved, and it appears to many that the Prime Minister has passed his first major test in […]
In response to the recent wave of riots, Keir Starmer has promised to deliver a ‘standing army’ of specially-trained public-order police officers. But at a time of stretched public budgets, how does the Prime Minister propose to do this? And if the Government anticipates that unrest will be an ongoing problem (which it seems to, […]
