Blair on Blair and the politics of policing - News - Evening Standard
       

Blair on Blair and the politics of policing

SIR IAN BLAIR warned today that the ability to provide a first-class police service was threatened by the "breaking down of political and media consensus".

In Police Review magazine, he said: "Until the Eighties, a political consensus prevented one party attempting to gain advantage over another about policing. Then something happened ... that was the phrase 'tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime' first coined by Tony Blair in 1992, when shadow home secretary.

"The discovery by Labour of crime as a working-class issue left the Conservative Party bereft of one of its 'banker' policies.

"Suddenly, the Left were championing tougher legislation. Policing and crime became a red-hot political issue and a matter of continual comment in newspapers on both the Left and Right - and there it has remained. Every mistake is magnified with few achievements celebrated, except by the government of the day."

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