Rupert Matthews is the Police and Crime Commissioner for Leicestershire and Rutland.
Sir Keir Starmer can’t see a bus approaching without throwing somebody under it. His trouble is that he’s running out of people to throw, but the buses just keep on coming.
I few days ago, I was canvassing in a Labour-held ward in Lincoln – a Labour authority. Of the 170 doors that I knocked on, only one person told me that they would vote Labour. In a Labour-held ward! There were plenty saying they’d vote Reform UK, several Conservatives and a handful of Greens, but only one Labour. And he was doing so because he knew the sitting councillor, not out of any love for Labour per se.
I’ve found a similar story when knocking on doors in Norfolk and Essex. Very few say they will vote Labour on May 7th. Of course, there may be some “shy Labour voters” who don’t want to admit to what they intend to do. But even so it is a bleak picture for Labour at the local elections in May.
If Starmer finds a fall guy to throw under that bus, there are plenty more heading down the road to his bus stop.
There is the slowly unfolding mess of Local Government Reform [LGR]. In my home county, we were originally promised an executive mayor to rule over all of Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. Labour figures waxed lyrical about the supposed benefits of an executive mayor lording it over our city, market towns and rolling pastures. But that elusive mayor has vanished like the morning mist to be replaced by three unitary authorities instead. Or maybe two, the government hasn’t decided yet. If one of those is the city of Leicester, its boundaries are set to expand to swallow nearby villages. Or maybe not. Who knows? Confusion is rampant. Other counties up and down the country are similarly paralysed by indecision.
As I’ve travelled around the country for the local election campaigns, any mention of LGR has been met by exasperated signs and rolling eyes. I’ve not met anyone enthusiastic about it.
Police Reform is a similarly chaotic bus lumbering towards Sir Keir. As Police and Crime Commissioner, I have a stake here, of course, but I’m not the only one getting worried. When it was first announced that PCCs were to be abolished to be replaced by deputy mayors, nobody was much bothered, other than we PCCs. But with the news the executive mayor had vanished, there was concern. Who would take over instead? A panel of councillors, we were told. But as LGR is such an unpopular mess, how will that work?
In the event, it doesn’t matter. The Leicestershire Police are now set to be abolished, as are all county forces. Instead, we will have a national police force and a number of regional police forces. Who will hold governance over them, and raise taxes to pay for them? The Labour government has not yet said. But with PCC abolition only two years away, you’d think somebody would make a decision.
Last time regional police forces were suggested the cost was due to be £10 million in the East Midlands alone. It will be more now. Who will pay? It will come out of the budgets of the existing police forces, meaning fewer officers and less effective crime prevention. Who will get chucked under the bus of rising crime, I wonder?
Then there is the summer surge of illegal immigrants coming over the English Channel. The calm seas of summer will tempt tens of thousands across. All of them depending on the largess of the British taxpayer to feed them, and the skills of Sir Keir’s fellow human rights lawyers to stop them being deported. How many of them will be convicted of crimes, I wonder.
That brings us to our creaking criminal justice system. The prisons are full, so prisoners are released early thus removing the deterrent effect of the courts and leaving police officers frustrated at the lack of support for their hard work. Sentences are already derisively low thanks to the unelected sentencing council – one of the many quangos of experts to which Labour gave powers it has taken away from Parliament.
As for rural folk reeling from the heartless farm tax, attacks on their lifestyles and urban planning policies imposed on them, they’d be grateful just to see a bus coming to their villages.
And I haven’t even got on to Net Zero, rising fuel costs, forthcoming power blackouts, rising taxes, a faltering economy or our weakened armed forces.
But if Sir Keir Starmer is doomed, Labour won’t be far behind. We will get an idea of the carnage on local election day. Labour may think that they can ditch Starmer, get a shiny new leader and a bounce in the polls, but those buses are going to keep on coming no matter who is leader.
Like John Major after Black Wednesday in 1992, it is just a matter of time before the coming apocalypse for Labour. We must all be ready for that day!