How would making misogyny a hate crime have saved Sarah Everard?

I’m not sure very many of our politicians, the London Mayor or even the Met can really be said to care about the death of Sabina Nessa, the poor young school-teacher murdered in London nearly a fortnight ago. If you claim to care about the victim of a terrible crime, if you’re going to grandstand and say ‘something must be done’, you have to care about what actually happened to her. The circumstances matter — else how can you try to prevent it happening again?

‘Say her name’, they all intone, before using that same name as a sort of springboard from which they can leap on to their own favourite hobby-horses and canter off, quite forgetting this very particular, very sad affair.

For Sadiq Khan, Sabina Nessa’s death was another great opportunity to say how important it is that misogyny becomes a hate crime. This is Khan’s pet policy and formed part of his election campaign back in the spring. The violence against women and girls is an ‘epidemic’, he said on Good Morning Britain last week, his little face crumpled with concern. In the name of Sabina Nessa, Sarah Everard and sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, misogyny should be made a hate crime, and harassment in a public space against women should be a criminal offence.

Well, it sounds as if it’s relevant. It’s a policy about women and crime. But even if misogyny was a hate crime, how would it have helped Sabina? She wasn’t harassed in a public space, she was murdered, and murder is already a crime.

And does it really make sense, in Sabina’s name, to give the overstretched and exhausted police less time to hunt actual killers? A hate crime is in the eye of the beholder. A wolf whistle could be a criminal offence if misogyny became illegal.