Rupert Matthews is the Police and Crime Commissioner for Leicestershire and Rutland.
If you wanted to know what the future holds for the police in a Labour Britain, you needed only to attend the national general meeting of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, held in London last Thursday.
Yvette Cooper, our new Home Secretary, put in an appearance but so did the new cohort of Labour PCCs, including their unelected counterparts who hold PCC powers under Labour Mayors.
The new Labour PCC for Avon and Somerset set the tone when she stood up to announce that her police force was “institutionally racist”. She positively preened herself, and was met by admiring glances from her Labour colleagues and some others.
We were discussing the national “Policing Race Action Plan”. If you, like me, hoped that this was a practical guide on how to police communities with distinct cultures, you would be disappointed. There is not a word about taking shoes off when entering a mosque nor bowing when facing a Hindu deity.
“The key point here is governance” announced the Labour politician in charge. The plan aims to put into senior positions “advisors” drawn from the ranks of diversity and equality specialists. And they have to be black. Nothing so vulgar as an election, of course, they are to be appointed by like-minded colleagues.
The left-wing politicisation of the police continues. And far from objecting, the Chief Constables are actively collaborating.
This process began under a Conservative government. With Labour in charge expect this attempt at a left-wing political takeover of the police to be turbocharged.
When the Home Secretary’s speech came, it was positively Delphic in its gravity, boldness and vagueness.
She repeated the election pledge to put an extra 13,000 police officers on the streets. But we got no closer to learning how this would be paid for nor achieved.
We already know that this figure includes officers already hired under the Conservative government but it now appears that it will include officers moved from other duties back to the front line. The numbers available are relatively small. That leaves several thousand unaccounted for – costing perhaps £360 million. Labour argues this money could be found through more efficient purchasing of police equipment. But under the Conservatives procurement costs have already been driven down under the Blue Light Commercial initiative.
Ms Cooper loudly denounced the existing 43 police forces for debating with each other the best way to do policing and demanded increased co-operation.
Of course, having different forces free to trial new tactics and new ideas is a highly productive way to develop and improve policing in the face of criminals who are more inventive and daring than ever. But Labour always wants to see centralised control. And in the College of Policing and National Police Chiefs Council they will find willing allies. Top down control in Scotland is not a shining beacon of hope, yet Labour seem determined to follow it.
And what form will the “co-operation” so passionately demanded take? We don’t know.
Some speculate that Labour will mandate more joint ventures between police forces. In the East Midlands, for instance, the five forces have a joint organisation to go after organised criminal gangs. But these joint ventures have a mixed history. They tend be highly complex and bureaucratic, while forces have been known to join or pull out with little notice and for little reason.
Others think that Ms Cooper intends to destroy our county police structure and instead replace it with regional or even a national police force. Again the precedent from Scotland is not good. But Socialists have a dogmatic love of centralised control, so who knows?
With the huge Labour majority in Parliament, Yvette Cooper and her acolytes will be able to do pretty much as they wish. So what can Conservatives do?
Conservative Police and Crime Commissioners, such as myself, can put forward a Conservative alternative to Labour’s highly politicised approach.
In Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland we have introduced a new policy that police officers in uniform are banned from taking part in any activity that might compromise their neutrality. So no more dancing at Pride parades nor joining demonstrations.
And in my manifesto I pledged that the only flags to be flown from police building would be the Union Flag and that of the Leicestershire Police. The paperwork to implement this policy is now being processed.
Conservatives also need to ensure sensible and cautious financial management of the hundreds of millions of taxpayers money entrusted to us. As ever when dealing with the public sector, that is not easy. There are too many vested interests for the task to be easy. But it must be done.
If the Conservative Party is to be renewed then those of us in office locally have a role to play. We need to demonstrate what Conservatives can achieve when in office.
The best way to do that is not to play politics as Labour and Lib Dems love to do. It is to do our jobs properly.