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Labour Has More Questions Than Answers on Crime
April 30, 2010 1:58 PM
Violent Crime in Lambeth is rising under Labour
Lambeth's Labour Leader has been seen out and about with beaming Home Secretary Alan Johnson allegedly promoting Labour's tough new stance on crime.
Secretly we think he's already shamelessly glad-handing the guy he reckons will be Labour's next Leader (of the Opposition) in Parliament. And it was only such a short time ago that Steve Reed welcomed Labour's latest 'saviour' Gordon Brown on the Town Hall steps….
Labour's big on crime - and with rising violent crime in the borough using guns and knives, and burglaries soaring until very recently - they really need to be. But instead they prefer to slag-off the Lib Dems about anything and everything.
It was Labour, though, that scrapped the Lib Dems Council Community Crime Wardens that even the Police found helpful in their work. And it was Labour that wanted to close down police stations under a weird 'modernisation' tag. In other words the few remaining ones after they'd finished shutting a whole load of them might have had a lick of paint….
And don't forget that Labour supported the scrapping of Lambeth's Vice Unit under the Borough's last Commander so that street prostitution soared in Brixton Hill and Streatham to public outrage locally. Lib Dems campaigned vigorously to have the highly valued specialist unit reinstated - and it was.
And Steve Reed's really Big Idea on Crime now - hmm - that he supports CCTV apparently? Wow! But because the nasty Lib Dems don't even mention it in our manifesto, Labour's Leader fondly imagines we must automatically be against it.
What Tommy Rot. CCTV is a given, surely in this day and age? We doubt that Labour's manifesto mentioned police cars or handcuffs but we doubt they're against them. All we know for sure is that Labour's clapped out CCTV system, which often doesn't work or work as well as it should, will need a very expensive upgrade 'ere long.
Lib Dems will work even more closely with Safer Neighbourhood Panels and give them some real clout locally by offering them funds for special crime reduction projects in their areas. That's a really positive and practical strengthening of resources that probably will be even more scarce after May 6th.
And that's not in Labour's manifesto either.