The only measure showing an increase was gun crime, up 4%. This success in enforcement and crime prevention presents something of a problem for the Conservatives particularly as the local elections loom on May 1. How can they portray the Government as impotent in the face of the rising tide of crime (we've all read about in the Daily Mail) when the pesky figures keep going down? Focus solely on the very few increases of course.
This week every Conservative MP in the East Anglian region asked the same Parliamentary Question of Home Office Minister, 'Big' Vernon Coaker which was how much violent crime had risen in their constituency. Such co-ordinated attacks by PQ are rare and presumably orchestrated by Central Office for shadow Home Sec, David 'Headhunter' Davis. It would have been more effective if someone had told them crime figures are not collated by constituency. But Vern tried to be helpful and sent some figures through to the hapless backbenchers. None I saw showed very dramatic increases, some very small, some decreases. However one measure can be relied upon to increase exponentially which is always useful at election time: the fear of crime, always at a record high.
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