Far from defending the police and justice system, the Tories have ruinously defunded them
Defund the police was a provocative slogan for the US radical left and the settled policy of Britain’s ruling right. You should switch off politicians and commentators who talk about building a safer country, if they don’t face up to the debilitation that 11 years of Conservative defunding has inflicted on the criminal justice system.
Let one anecdote stand in for the bigger picture. The Tories sold half the magistrates’ courts and more than a third of county courts in England and Wales between 2010 and 2020, and about 600 police stations. The same government is engaged in a screeching U-turn today and trying to deal with the tens of thousands of Covid-delayed trials by opening “Nightingale courts”, although I doubt that Florence Nightingale would have sent the lowliest British soldier in Crimea to our fetid prisons.
