Starmer wants to steal crime from the Tories

It’s tempting to see Keir Starmer as a political wind-up merchant given the number of times he likes to quote people who annoy his own activists. Recently he adopted the ‘take back control’ slogan and today he approvingly quoted Margaret Thatcher. Hell, the man has even praised Tony Blair. 

The Thatcher quote today was in a speech about crime. The Labour leader told his audience in Stoke that: ‘The rule of law is the foundation for everything. Margaret Thatcher called it the “first duty of government” – and she was right.’ He later accused the Tories of having ‘thrown in the towel’ as he promised, like Blair in the 1990s, to make Labour tough on crime. 

Starmer and shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper have been doing the ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ riff for a while and they’ve been back performing it again this week because of the Casey review into the Metropolitan Police.