That Starmer fella...

https://twitter.com/supertanskiii/status/1638517760127901698/mediaViewer?currentTweet=1638517760127901698&currentTweetUser=supertanskiii

Bit of fire from Starmer today. He still trips over his words but he has the weight to throw around - when he talks about rape conviction rates being so awful, it means something. To Sunak it's just a talking point, and that comes across in the exchange.

Say what Starmer?

“Visible neighbourhood policing. We need reform to get more police on the beat - fighting the virus that is anti-social behaviour,” he says to applause.

“Fly-tipping, off-road biking in rural communities, drugs… Some people call this low-level - I don’t want to hear those words.”

Guess he means motorbikes / scramblers right?

Ah - I guess so. Not very clear though.

I agree, I'd thought the same (assumed MTB to start with) but had to think what he could mean!

Yeah, our local news webs sites wouldn't have much to report on if it wasn't for people on scramblers etc

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/mar/23/keir-starmer-promises-to-halve-violence-against-women-as-part-of-labour-crime-mission

his speach on crime is laughable to anyone who doesn't own a 40k kitchen conversion and crosses the road as soon as they see a "youth"

Restore public confidence in the police and criminal justice system to its highest ever level.
Halve knife crime incidents, including with an enhanced police presence outside schools.
Drastically improve statistics for the proportion of crimes solved by the police.
Drive down violence against women and improve conviction rates.

It's important to remember this guy was a laywer, was head of the pps, and is generally very knowledgable of the policing structures and the issues which face it. he's also a man who has praised cressida dick for her integrity and work as commisioner of the met after the numerous threats to women and minorities she has over seen and covered up to the point where she resigned! while having years of decisions to map possible policy angles he could approach this from.

Starmer said there were clear and stark inequalities at play when it came to tackling crime, which he saw first-hand as director of public prosecutions.

yet he had no interest in addressing these issues when he was head of the PPS, or critiqueing the service in any meaningful capacity when the systemic failings are plain to all. his interest is firmly focused on criminalisation as a deterrent, rather than the systemic underpinnings. reflective of his wider poltic.

“Yes, it’s Labour’s plan to tackle the crime wave gnawing away at our collective sense of security

This is right wing drivel, even if you are a believer, as i am, that starmer is simply throwing red meat out to keep the eyre off his true ambitions, pairing this with his past work and that of the labour aparatus which supports him, it's impposible to see this going well or solving any of the issues with the police

when paired with

Halve knife crime incidents, including with an enhanced police presence outside schools.

and his history on tackling crime for youth offendors and the process he believes fit for it is down right inseperable from a daily mail paper. this is inseperable from a carceral school to prison pipeline without offering even a breath towards the idea that these issues do not come from delinquence, but the material barriers facing people. the cowardice of subsequent labour leaderships to talk about crime and policing; especially police reform, without making a case that crime is not something to be solved carcerally, but by the state being more effective at supporting its citizens, is a disgrace for any self respecting left party.

it's impossible to see from this how he will manifest this any different from the blair government with its increase in criminialisation of antisocial behaviour while failing to address the systemic issues of policing and why public confidence is falling.

“Fly-tipping, off-road biking in rural communities, drugs… Some people call this low-level - I don’t want to hear those words.”

i assume the asbos will be called "community support and reform orders" and the the ankle tags will have pride flag straps. an equal numeber of women and men will be doing the overpolicing of communities veiled under the aledging of someone riding an unmuffled 2 stroke, the local teen hawking weed will will have a narcos style panorama episode.

The Labour leader said there would be specialist task forces in every police force on rape and violence against women, including specialist domestic abuse workers in the control rooms of every police force responding to 999 calls, supporting victims of abuse.

this goes hand in hand with his thoughts on policing children, these services need to be seperate from the police, if they're to have any meaningful hope of rebuilding peoples trust in the police force understanding and prosecuting rape cases. giving police, who have shown time and time again that they'll squander the resources or hire litterall sex offendors with no oversight and internal suppression, more money to provide these services is at best, naieve, at worse, uterus washing an expansion of the police state.

external services are essential to support the imeasurable amount of victims who won't or cannot go to the police in getting support for sexual assult, but also to hold the police independantly accountable when they fuck up, rather than bury it under a steaming heap of internal corruption and embeded institutional racism and sexism.

his speach on crime is laughable to anyone who doesn't own a 40k kitchen conversion and crosses the road as soon as they see a "youth"

Feels like the opposite to me. It seemed to me to be firmly aimed at those people who live in violent, rundown, crime-ridden areas, and feel - correctly - as though the govt doesn't give a monkeys about them:

In his speech, Starmer said it was “working people who pay the heaviest price” when antisocial behaviour was rife and there was complacency from the government because “their kids don’t go to the same schools, nobody fly-tips on their streets. The threat of violence doesn’t stalk their communities.”

I'm lucky enough to live in quite a nice area now (Leyton) but I grew up in Dagenham, and as a teenager I felt what it was like to grow up where random and severe violence were a daily risk. And I became what they call 'hypervigilant', where you're so on edge for risk that it takes over your life. Of course I didn't know it then, we just thought it was being streetwise. But that's what it was.

And I always wondered, when I went out with middle class people, how they managed to treat the city like a playground rather than an assault course. And that's why. Because they grew up somewhere they didn't have to be ready to fight at a moment's notice.

And back in the days that was a weird experience. But now it's much more common for working people.

The Tories have no idea how bad things are. Starmer is right to highlight it.

policing does little to address why crime manifests in poor neighbourhoods (at lower rates than richer communities, drug use, antisocial, labour and financial crimes are not policed in sw1!), but does lead to the harrassment of the population by police in poor and marginalised neighbourhoods.

i for one am less peturbed by the noisy moped, or the addict on my steps struggaling as a threat to me or my estate, than i am the privatisation of public space and my stagnating wages causing greater desperation in my community which might manifest or be construed as anti social behaviour or crime. the only people who benifit from this style of speech are white gentrifiers and landlords as they do not recieve the same overpolicing of their bodies in the community, or are not active in the communuty when reporting the crime of lowering property values.

if this speech was truly to address why these people recieve this asymetrical policing, it would speak and more to the point, make promises on how they're going to address the structural racism and discrimination within the police force; how power is applied asymetrically, how capital often escapes policing and drives those under it into criminalised activity, rather than simply expand the resources the police have to enact it. it does none of this, it ignores the voices of those most marginalised, pinned between the violence of state and capital

your comment is naieve and othering, an example of when we think of policing we think of the protection of capital depending on our proximity to it or asperations of it, than we do of its effect on people at the whims of it on either side of legality.

broken windows theory is just as useless today as it was in 1982

(deleted comment re: NYC and broken windows)

tell that to the people who were stuck in, and killed by rikers in the last 40 years

Fair

i for one am less peturbed by the noisy moped, or the addict on my steps struggaling as a threat to me or my estate

Interesting you raise that. I live in an ex council block in Leyton and when I first moved in a gang of heroin addicts made our space their base of operations. They left needles everywhere, intimidated residents; one five year old girl witnessed them shooting up, and their mum got abused for asking them to leave. They burgled one of our elderly blind residents, and tried robbing the rest of us too. They nicked stuff from the local area and stashed it in our estate. They harassed the women on the estate. They shat in public and they set fires. They scared people.

Perhaps you genuinely are someone who would find that sort of thing less troubling than the 'privatisation of public space' - though I'd suggest that if you'd experienced it yourself, or through those you loved most in the world, you might revisit that opinion. You're of course entitled to it as is. But it suggests your experience of such things is entirely academic.

Longer term, it is of course a better strategy to eradicate crime not by punishing bad behaviour but rewarding good behaviour. But when you suggest that as the only approach, you effectively de-centre the victims. It's probably true to say that a rapist would benefit more from psychotherapy than prison, in terms of reducing crime; but his victims deserve justice too. Punishment and rehabilitation are both necessary for justice, but punishment is more important to a victim.

It's not the behaviour of a 'white gentrifier' or a 'landlord' or someone who 'isn't active in the local community' to want crime tackled. The young working class immigrant families in my block wanted the issue resolved even more than I did. And until Labour can say without shame that we are in favour of tackling crime and antisocial behaviour, we will be - rightly - excluded from government. This is something ordinary people care about. They are not insulated from it in the way that many who talk about the solely public health approach to crime are.

i also have currently a group of addicts on my doorstep at all hours, shooting up and leaving paraphinalia, who lit a fire on another neighbours doorstep and have harrassed both, me my partner, and neighbours elderly and with kids, marginalised and otherwise ignored by the council building new flats over the road

we've gone to about 3 different charities for both adicts and homelessness, the council and community figures. no-one can help, no-one has budget to help. we're just referred to the police. when my neighbour caved and called the police they made a big song and dance turning up but what did they do? put the person in prison? clear them off? refer them to services which will not take them? the structural issue causing this still exists, policing it did nothing. fwiw they're back now, the issue isn't solved

when my house was bricked and my mum stalked when i was younger, she was quick to call the police, all they saw was a derranged old woman in poverty, i assume they only turned up in the first place because of the post code. they recieved funding increases every year since but the services which helped my mum have been nothing but cut year on year

i've been burgled while in birmingham, yet again police did nothing to assist, nor offer me or my housemates support in the aftermath (marginalised people stuck in a HMO leveraged for someones rent), just a crime number and a officer who informed me to "get an alarm" and was not going to pick up the phone any time soon nor called us ever again

i've had fights outside my appartment in worcester where someone called the cops, knock on my door and instead of taking my polite i didn't see anything insisted i must be on drugs because of my eyes and asked to come in, causing me to firmly decline and close the door, hoping they didn't come back

when my partner was robbed in uni the police came, locked up the "kown" guy and asked him to pay £200 to them, he didn't have this to his name, which is why he was stealing phones from women at the laundrette. when my partner reached out to them for victim support and follow up because she felt unsafe as a 19 year old in a strange city being robbed, nout nada, but did patronise her as a silly young girl who needs to be more careful and the big bad man has gone away now

let's not even get onto the compleat ignorance and participation the police enact when it comes to me being hate crimed as a faggot!

all these situations would have benefited from investing in non police based, community support agencies, to support victims and provide security, giving agency to people to be able to stand up to the person or the developer terrorising their community, even repair damage that had been done or pevent it from happening, none of them are addressed by "more police". policing with its current outcomes does not benefit the victim unless the victim is capital or needs to protect or replace their capital, so the exapansion of policing as reform, is useless to marginalised victims or those of violent crime.

i speak about this as this exact policy approach has been used against me and my wider community, and bought no end to the violence or discrimination, even when we were as scared as the neighbours you describe. all it bought was more policing of our bodies, actions and communities.

i'm not sure why i have to publically out myself like this to speak about non carceral police reform? i can only assume you believe me to be a Caricature of a person you've created in your head, there is a reason i described you as othering. there is a reason i phrased your critique without attacking your individual material factors, i don't know them, i don't know you, it's not important nor does it undermine the work numerous people have done before, and far better than i ever will, advocating for anti carceral reforms and police abolition.

seems like you have a chip on your shoulder

Dude TBF you started it with your opening gambit and then the 2nd paragraph in response to BR.

Fwiw I think there were some excellent points made in your OP but all the anti-Waitrose agenda undermined it. Moreover, being tough on crime is not mutually exclusive to being tough on the causes of crime.

sorry ma'am, just to highlight

“Fly-tipping, off-road biking in rural communities, drugs… Some people call this low-level - I don’t want to hear those words.”

"i for one am less peturbed by the noisy moped, or the addict on my steps struggaling as a threat to me or my estate, than i am..."

these are specific dog whistles to upper middle class, subruban voters, starmer has outlined here the crime he wants to be tough on, and how he wants to be tough on it. the comment also follows a joke about how what we / he decides to police is socially decided along class lines and avoids speaking about a lot of the often, violent crime done by state and capital which affects me. such as my landlord not dealing with asbestos and trying to evict me, or the council selling public land and then private buyers hiring security to police residents.

these are not projections of peoples character, but a response to starmer.

these are specific dog whistles to upper middle class, subruban voters

That's just like your opinion man. I can't add anything to BR's lengthy response - but imo it is aimed at a number of groups including low income voters.

I don't have any stories to share about addicts on estates, but ime upper middle class suburban voters are much more concerned with cost of living and a shit shower of economic management.

And I always wondered, when I went out with middle class people, how they managed to treat the city like a playground rather than an assault course. And that's why. Because they grew up somewhere they didn't have to be ready to fight at a moment's notice.

This is something of a generalisation. I’m middle class and require the exact same amount of notice for a fight. ‘One moment while I remove my GMT Master II.’

Getting a smack in the mouth off a middle class person is just a nicer experience, isn't it. Taste the difference.

The lingering aroma of Aesop resurrection aromatique hand balm, perhaps?

these are specific dog whistles to upper middle class, subruban voters

Judging by my local, street WhatsApp group (which definitely isn't an upper middle class area) or my hometown (which I think may sneak into the top 10 most deprived towns in the UK) these are exactly the kind of things that people are worried about.

I like in Starmer's tax return that he earned £14 interest on his savings. Quite the contrast with Sunak.

£14 interest on his savings

Lovely detail. That'll make the accusations of metropolitan liberal elitism from Sunak really land

I’m pretty sure you’ll read it here first.