Boris Johnson’s crackdown on crime is a smokescreen – but it will work like a charm on former Tories

Editorial: The complexities of the issues that the prime minister has glossed over with this move will not concern the voters who must be won back, close to zero of whom are unlikely to have been targeted by the criminal justice system themselves

Sunday 11 August 2019 20:31 BST
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Boris Johnson posts video claiming he'll help 'restore faith' in UK democracy

It bears all the hallmarks of a Boris Johnson policy. An attention-grabbing announcement that involves great public expenditure on infrastructure and is immediately dismissed as absurd by anyone with any expertise in the subject.

Where once there was the “Boris Island” airport, the garden bridge, the cable car to nowhere, now there are to be 10,000 new prison places, at a cost of £2.5bn, money which Sajid Javid, the chancellor, has already approved.

Being seen to be tough on law and order, principally by locking more people up for longer, is a direct appeal to the type of voter that has abandoned the Conservatives for the Brexit Party, whom they urgently need back.

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