Politics Uncovered newsletter: how to solve knife crime?

Organised by Labour candidate Gen Kitchen (who you can read more about in this interview) it brought together schoolchildren, community leaders and Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper.

It was a fascinating conversation, just a few days after the latest ONS figures showed that recorded knife crime in England and Wales rose by 5% over the last 12 months.

These kind of offences are no longer just the preserve of the UK’s big cities, but sadly are now also a common occurrence in towns and more rural areas, in part thanks to the proliferation of County Lines drug dealing.

The politicians heard first hand about the impact of knife crime in Wellingborough. Headteacher Jon Hunt told the pair that he wouldn’t let his children walk to the park after being chased home by balaclava-clad thugs armed with knives. Charity Off The Streets explained that the most dangerous time for children being attacked with blades was when they are walking home from school.

Labour is making halving knife crime over the next decade part of its five missions for power. Cooper and leader Keir Starmer have unveiled a number of policies to bring this about, including that any young person caught with a knife will get a bespoke action plan to prevent reoffending.

The Labour leader also pledged tough criminal sanctions on tech executives who allow knife sales on their online marketplaces, such as Amazon Marketplace, eBay and Instagram. 

However, interestingly, the view from the community leaders was that there needs to be as much focus on prevention as intervention. Headteacher Hunt told the group that politicians need to be thinking about how to stop nine and 10-year-olds from being recruited into that lifestyle.

He said youngsters get involved with knife crime “because they feel like they belong somewhere”. There needs to be a focus “not just on intervention but also prevention”, he added.

The issue of knife crime being glamorised on social media was also raised. One pupil said: “They see all these people in that style [on TikTok], they think they are so cool.” While Hunt said it was important to raise children who are “resilient” to the influences of social media. 

After the round table I asked Cooper which aspects of the discussion she would be taking back to Labour HQ for consideration. She did the classic politicians’ thing of answering the question she wanted to be asked, instead of the one I was asking, and just told me about Labour’s policy of community hubs. However, she did say that Labour wanted stronger action on tech companies, where gangsters were featuring on their platforms.

As ever, a lot of the key work was being done by the third sector, charities, volunteers and the father of the church, who was hosting the event. They all felt like the local authority should be doing more to help them, with each organisation at risk of going under due to funding issues. Fr Ben Lewis said they were tired of being “over promised and under delivered”. Hopefully that can change soon.

Story of the week

Labour WILL look to regulate crypto-currency, I revealed. This had appeared in doubt when Rachel Reeves met a number of crypto-firms at Davos, including Coinbase which last year was forced to pay out $100 million due to money-laundering compliance failures. If Labour was elected this would be a significant shift for the sector, with the government currently positioning the UK as a global crypto hub - despite the many issues.

Quote of the week

“Let’s imagine that you were invited to an event like this, a Labour business conference, before any of the changes to our party had taken place. The question is - would you go?”

Laughter echoed around the hall at the Oval cricket ground, as Keir Starmer asked executives if they would have attended a Labour business conference while Jeremy Corbyn was leader. One thing Starmer failed to mention, which definitely would have interested small businesses, was Brexit. 

Coming up this week

Liz Truss is back, the words every Politics Uncovered reader wanted to hear. The former Prime Minister is launching (another!) Tory offshoot group alongside Jacob Rees-Mogg, the optimistically titled Popular Conservatism movement.

Remember, when Truss resigned as PM Labour was on 56% in the polls with the Tories left on 19%. While most voters may not care about the return of Truss, it will provide a further headache for Rishi Sunak and this group will likely coordinate opposition to his plan to ban smoking and other policies.

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