Conservative Party leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch has said she would refocus police resources on street crime, not “hurt feelings”, as Prime Minister.
While policing, crime, and sentencing — like other issues important to the public like immigration and the erosion of free speech — were ignored during Sunday’s televised leadership debate, Badenoch has taken the time to set out her stall on law and order, The Daily Mail reports.
“The public rightly expect the police to deal with criminals, not to intervene in Twitter spats. My Government will ensure police resource is always focused on fighting crime on our streets,” she vowed, saying that it was time to end the “onerous burden” of “policing of people’s hurt feelings” — and suggesting that, at present, police leaders are not deploying their resources appropriately.
This approach contrasts sharply with that of Penny Mordaunt, the current frontrunner to win the Tory leadership race — although Rishi Sunak, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, currently has the support of the most Members of Parliament (MPs) — who has suggested Britain needs even more censorship, complaining in her Bill Gates and Tony Blair endorsed 2021 book Greater: Britain After the Storm that the country lacks a “[criminal] offence of stirring up hatred on the grounds of transgender identity”.
The current government is also pushing an anti-free speech Online Harms Bill through Parliament, which Baedenoch says she opposes.
Police officers intervening when trans activists are offended by things people say on social media has been highlighted as an issue a number of times in recent years, with the courts even coming down on Humberside Police after it told former police officer Harry Miller to “check his thinking” and logged him as having been involved in a “non-crime hate incident” over a Twitter joke.
“I find the combination of the police visiting the claimant’s place of work, and their subsequent statements in relation to the possibility of prosecution, were a disproportionate interference with the claimant’s right to freedom of expression because of their potentially chilling effect,” the judge ruled, admonishing the force that Britain has “never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi.”
In addition to saying she would refocus officers’ attention on street crime, Badenoch said she would take “whatever steps are necessary to end the recording of non-crime hate incidents” — something Home Secretary Priti Patel has already claimed she would do but has still not delivered.
A wild card contender in the race to replace Boris Johnson as Tory leader and, by extension, Prime Minister, Badenoch is popular among grassroots party activists and supporters due to the fact it seems she might actually be something like a conservative, frequently topping popularity polls –although as ordinary members only get to vote on a final two chosen by MPs it currently seems unlikely that they will get a chance to vote for her.
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