The Tories are risking their reputation as the party of law and order

Theresa May’s Home Office record is normally off limits at cabinet. But when ministers discussed the government’s strategy for reducing violent crime on Tuesday, Boris Johnson took issue with what the Prime Minister regards as one of her key legacies: the dramatic reduction in stop and search. He argued that more stop and search was needed to deal with a spike in crime. What went unsaid — but what every-one around the cabinet table was acutely aware of — was that this was the opposite of Mrs May’s approach as Home Secretary.

The exchange was pointed. ‘They irritate each other,’ one cabinet minister observed to me afterwards. They also have form on these matters. They clashed on law and order when May was home secretary and Johnson was mayor of London and in charge of the capital’s policing. One secretary of state half-jokingly described the cabinet as a ‘water cannons retrospective’, a reference to Johnson’s irritation when May barred the Metropolitan police from using the ones he had bought after the 2011 London riots.