Yvette Cooper says no to elected police commissioners. The Shadow Home Secretary gave
her speech to the Labour conference this morning and, in addition to launching an independent review into policing (which has been welcomed by senior police officers), she defined her opposition to
the government’s flagship police reform. Britain can ill afford the £100 million pounds cost of elected commissioners and the reform threatens to politicise the
police by concentrating power in a single person without sufficient checks and balances.
From the applause in the hall, you’d have thought that the whole party was behind her. But not every delegate agrees. At a fringe meeting on Monday night, Hazel Blears and Labour List co-editor Mark Ferguson agreed that Labour should back elected police commissioners because the party must, in Ferguson’s words, support “democracy in society at all times”.
Ferguson’s words were part of a common theme running through fringe meetings this year: there are many within the Labour movement who insist that the party must reclaim localism and the Big Society from the opportunistic Conservatives.
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