‘Five things I’ve learned so far on the campaign trail to be Sussex PCC’

The brilliant thing about campaigning for Labour is the people you meet and the things you learn. Experience is truly the best teacher. I’ve always tried to shape my politics by listening to people, looking at evidence and applying enduring values to changing circumstances.

If you want to discover the dangers of unchanging dogma, look around our world. Or consider the result of the 2019 general election. So, as I campaign to be the police and crime commissioner (PCC) for Sussex, here are five things that have struck me so far:

1. People are really pissed off with the Tories

I mean, really pissed off. This is more than a sense of resignation or ennui, this is visceral. ‘Partygate’. Potholes. Day-long waits in A&E. Sewage in the sea. People pulling out their own teeth. Swelling class sizes. Dying high streets. Rising prices and rents. Trains that don’t come. And it feels like the Tories are just hanging on until their last gasp.

So many of the people I speak to have fallen out of love with the government and are psephologically shopping around: some are coming to Labour, some to don’t know, some to Reform UK, some just staying at home. But they’re not voting for Sunak. After 14 years, this feels like a moment of inflection.

2. The criminal justice system is broken

There is a residual, cultural sympathy for the police. Robert Peel’s principle that the police are the public and the public are police is robust. We consent to be policed. However, there is a deep sense of frustration that the police seem so stretched that they cannot respond in time, or at all, when something goes down.

I have a genuine fear that sizeable chunks of the population will withdraw their goodwill from the police if they feel there’s no point phoning them. Witnesses won’t come forward, and victims won’t take criminals to court. The lengthy delays for justice, if it comes at all, undermine people’s faith.

We need a total reset, with more police, faster response times, better detection rates, shorter times from arrest to sentence and more prison places. Without a fresh start, the only winners are the criminals.

3. Labour has to grasp the nettle of antisocial behaviour

We have to get serious about the people who make lives a misery for others because they refuse to play by the rules. As socialists, we believe in society and the norms of decency, civility, reciprocity and neighbourliness that should govern our shared spaces and associations with each other.

You can see the breakdown in civility in our high streets, in our parks, on public transport and on the seafronts (Sussex has a lot of these). People playing loud music from their phones. Dropping litter. Abusing others. Graffiti. Out-of-control dogs.

Labour must fashion a policy response to all this chaos before it engulfs us and give local authorities and the police the resources and powers to challenge antisocial behaviour and restore decency. This is a real issue for millions of people.

4. Lots of people are smoking weed

You can smell it on the air and when people come to their doors when we call. It’s not just hip parts of Brighton; it’s the rural villages, commuter towns and seaside resorts. It seems as ubiquitous as cigarette smoking was in the 1970s and 1980s when I was growing up, when everyone smoked all over the place: in restaurants, at work, in the cinema, on the bus and tube and in bed.

The difference is that the people smoking weed are fuelling organised crime gangs and an enormous industry of production, distribution and sales, without a penny coming to the exchequer.

A Labour government is going to have to look afresh at UK law, take in the evidence from places such as Malta, Holland, Germany, Canada and the USA, look at the health issues and fashion some kind of framework of law that makes sense. A good start would be a royal commission.

5. Neighbourhood policing is really popular

I’ve said it before, but I believe the Tories’ and Lib Dems’ decision to remove 20,000 cops from our streets stands as one of the stupidest pieces of public policy since the poll tax. I went on the Police Federation demonstration in May 2012 with 30,000 angry cops and their supporters and booed the Home Office as we passed. I’ve been booing it ever since.

The Labour policy — local neighbourhood police teams with regular foot patrols — goes down very well. It is a policy which hits the sweet spot of being both popular and effective.

All the evidence is that local neighbourhood policing not only reassures the public, but also prevents crime, which is after all the primary goal of the police. That’s why I’ve made it the centrepiece of my campaign and manifesto and top of the list of what I want from a Labour Home Secretary. More neighbourhood police teams will mean I can blow kisses next time I stroll past Marsham Street, not boo.

This piece was originally published on Medium and can be found here.

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