.
Watching the widespread disorder in British cities one notices that the police always seem to be heavily outnumbered. The reason for this is simple, British police, courts and prisons have been cut to the bone by successive Tory governments.
Faced with a law and order crisis in his first weeks of office and having ruled out increases in public spending, how would Starmer and the Thatcherettes respond when their options appear very limited? With a flurry of bullshit ‘policy announcements’ that crumble on contact with any scrutiny of course!
To take them in turn:
Keir Starmer’s new ‘standing army’ of specialist police to tackle riots
Really? This raises a lot of questions. Starmer said:
“We will [my emphasis) have a standing army of specialist public duty officers so that we will have enough officers to deal with this where we need them,”
So this ‘standing army’ has yet to be created much less deployed and the need for it is revealing.
The specialist group of people we call on to deal with riots in the UK are called the police. Now the government announces that we will create a new grouping to tackle riots. Why? Because the police can’t.
Calling it a ‘standing army’ is pure spin, designed to cower the mobs (it won’t work) and appease blue rinse tories who love the idea of setting the army on the working class.
I have searched all over for details about this ‘standing army’ and found nothing so all we have are questions:
- From where will this army spring?
- How will it be recruited?
- What training will members receive?
- Will they be paid above and beyond ordinary police officers?
- When will their training be completed?
- When will this new ‘standing army’ be ready to deploy?
- How many men will it have?
- Why are these men to be called ‘public duty officers’ and not police officers?
- What legal standing will recruits have and what legislation will apply to them?
- Is it legal for the state to just recruit a bunch of security officers to respond to a political crisis?
- Where will the money come from for Starmer’s new army? I thought we had a £20 billion pound black hole in the public finances and had to double down on tory austerity measures, how will this new ‘army’ suddenly be afforded?
Truth is, once the current disorder has dissipated, this idea will get lost in the Whitehall machinery and the UK media will memory hole it. It’s just a PR gimmick relayed without even cursory scrutiny by a media well used to just copying and pasting government press releases.
Sir Keir Starmer vows to ‘ramp up criminal justice’ after Cobra meeting to discuss violent disorder
Now look, ‘ramp up’ is one of those phrases like ‘change’ that all politicians use when they need to be seen to be doing something but can’t, it commits you to nothing specifically but implies that urgent progress will be made.
Starmer said:
“we will ramp up criminal justice. There have already been hundreds of arrests, some have appeared in court this morning.”
The British criminal justice system is a necessarily complex and specialist service, it is not equipped with a political accelerator to make it go faster when politicians in a pickle need a face saving headline.
It gets worse, because Starmer not only promised fast arrests and people held on remand (headlined by The Guardian as ‘nick em quick’) but also fast convictions. So much for the rule of law and ‘innocent until proven guilty’.
Another problem for this ‘nick-em-quick’ idea is that Labour spent the opening two weeks of their government pumping out press releases saying that our already overcrowded prison service was falling apart.
If we had any actual journalists in the UK they surely would ask where all these ‘nick-em-quick’ prisoners on remand are to go? Presumably once nicked quick they will have to be sharpishly released quick as well.
Of course this is all PR fluff – in case of national emergency break glass and lots of tossed off fantasy policy announcements come spurting out of the media pipe.
If the public were suddenly vexed about the poor quality of sausage rolls on the British high street, I guarantee that Keir Starmer would be on TV gravely intoning about a flurry of policy initiatives within 24 hours saying:
“We as a government want to make it absolutely clear that we share the concern of the British people who fear encountering a low quality sausage roll on a British street, we say that there is no place for untasty sausage rolls in our society and unequivocally condemn all those who sell reduced quality pork based snacks of any kind.
Today I can announce that we will be seeking the return of the Jedi and will we will be forming a new Super Sausage Roll Whizzy High Command Inspectorate who will be deployed where we need them. We will ramp up high quality sausage roll production to meet all demands”
and at the end of 18 months of the new Super Sausage Roll Whizzy High Command Inspectorate… your sausage rolls would be unchanged.
Reality for the modern politician lives in dreamed up headlines – not in the material reality the rest of us have to live in.
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