As usual I tuned in to the Andrew Marr BBC 1 programme on Sunday morning but was surprised to hear the shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper uttering that phrase made famous by Tony Blair "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime." Now I have to admit I find her one of the most irritating of modern-day politicians and was very disappointed to see that only her husband featured in that days Sunday Times poll that unquestionably put Peter Mandelson at the top.
Anyway, it took me genuinely by surprise as I thought that particular mantra had recently been pronounced as officially dead by Sadiq Khan the Labour shadow justice secretary? As this article from the Daily Telegraph dated 7th March shows, Khan had plainly stated that "Labour had got it wrong in trying to be tough on crime." The implication was that this was indeed the view of Ed Milliband and hence presumably the Shadow Cabinet. But according to this article in the Guardian dated three days later, Yvette Cooper has made it plain that Labour is still firmly behind Tony's rhetoric. I guess there's not really any great rush to clarify things anytime soon, but it would be good to know what HM Oppositions view actually is I suppose.
If you want to know what the Labour policy is, then reflect on the last government who were no friends of community justice.However, this is a government as with previous Tory ( and that what it is) administrations that will have no moral doubt about driving through whole scale privatisation of the criminal justice sector. It's only the private that will limit the government's ambition as it will only want easy access to profit.
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