In Downing Street in the first decade of this century we used to tally how many times New Labour had been declared dead. Rarely did a week go by without an article suggesting that the once all-conquering New Labour had bitten the dust. For a long while, under Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn, it really had. But now New Labour is back. In a speech at the Institute for Government last week, Yvette Cooper, the shadow Home Secretary, said “30 years ago this year… Tony Blair said our party would be “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime. It was right then and it is right now.”
It has taken the Labour Party a long while for crime to become a strategic priority but it is the perfect campaign issue. A vigilant opposition is always searching for topics of genuine concern to the electorate on which the Government is failing and they have some clear credibility themselves. It is rare to find an issue on which all three tests are passed handsomely but the incidence of crime, and the terrible mess of the criminal justice system, is one such question.
