Grayling debuts his own soundbite

Mrs Campbell

Er, fewer rights and more wrongs? Shurely shome mishtake, Ed

stereodog

I'm sorry but "fewer rights and more wrongs" is an awful soundbite. Firstly the idea of 'fewer rights' will put off the kind of urban liberals that the Conservatives need to get to vote for them them and not the Liberal Democrats. Also the great virtue of 'tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime' is that it means precisely the same thing however you read it but 'fewer rights more wrongs' could also be read by those of a literal mindset as "The Conservatives will get fewer things right and more things wrong". Needs work I fancy

Matthew Cain

I think the speech was poor but the policy advocated really bad:

It would leave victims and communities in a worse state than now.

http://blog.matthewcain.co.uk/tory-policy-on-troublemakers-is-hopeless/

Kevyn Bodman

You are correct to recognise the power of soundbites.
You are very much not correct to welcome any soundbite that contains the words 'fewer rights'.
Because of the power of soundbites this could gain traction among non-thinkers; it could end up being dangerously distorted.

And let's be clear that there is a difference between suspects' rights and criminals' rights.

Suspects' rights are absolutely essential in a free society.

Jonathan

Peter,

Sorry - but a good sound-bite should not need an accompanying explanation. So while “Fewer rights, more wrongs" might raise a few titters in the Coffee House office, it will not resonate on the streets.

What Tory policy and presentation needs is a simple narrative. Why not try and re-hash the old ‘three strikes and you’re out’ rule for minor offences and anti-social behaviour. On the third conviction (including cautions) the offender would go straight to jail for a minimum period - say 2, 3, 4, or 5 years – depending on how tough you want to be. [Minor offence 1 & 2 would receive cautions, community service, fines etc.. at the discretion of the police/magistrate – more serious offenders would still go directly to jail].

Yes the prison population would rocket, and yes someone would end up going to jail for a minor repeat offence like graffiti, fly-tipping or shop lifting. But trust me – while the liberal media might be appalled – the public would love it.

The Conservatives should also press ahead with their ‘honest sentencing’ agenda. When a judge sets a tariff to a crime – that should be the minimum time served – rather than time-off for good behaviour, prisoners who break the rules should have privileges revoked and or extra time added to their sentence. Again this would resonate with the man on the street.

And to show that the Conservatives are not just the nasty party – we should invest heavily in prisoner rehabilitation schemes both inside and outside jail.

Pete Hoskin

All: the more I think about it, the less that snippet from Grayling's speech resonates. You may be winning me round...

Chris

Dreadful soundbite; you have to think about what it means (which is notintended to be a putdown of the electorate or politicians.) Good job your [sic] not in charge of educashun, Peter: 'have struggled to escape it is shadow'?

Pete Hoskin

Sill think it was a decent speech overall, though.

Pete Hoskin

Chris: thanks for the spot. Corrected now.

Elf, shocked

'Fewer rights, more wrongs'?? AAAH! That is AWFUL. Is this man really signed up to the 'Davis Agenda'? WHO thought that one would sound good? Absolutely agree with stereodog.

C Powell

Dreadful. We need to claw back the rights Labour have taken away from us. We need the Tories to stand up for our historic rights and liberties. They're meant to be CONSERVATIVES, for God's sake!

What Labour have got wrong is that they have removed our rights in the name of security while doing precisely nothing to give us real security e.g. by letting troublemakers into the country and by not taking action against those who do threaten our security. Precisely the reverse needs to happen i.e. a strong immigration policy / proper police action coupled with the rights we used to have (to trial by jury / not to be locked up etc) rather than the pretend rights under the Human Rights Act and the investigation of nonsense PC crimes coupled with no action against real crimes we now have.

Do the Tories still not understand that there is an open goal on civil liberties, which is theirs for the snatching? People are fed up with Labour's authoritarian state: they understand perfectly well that this is about the state gathering power for itself, that it has sod all to do with protecting us and catching criminals and everything to do with giving the state more power to tax us, harass us and generally make our life a nuisance ("us" being the law-abiding not the criminals).

This meshes perfectly with what the Tories' theme should be: get the state off our backs so that we can live our lives as free citizens and leave the state to do the things which it ought to do, properly. I've spelt it out numerous times on these pages, so have others. Dominic Raab has written a good book on it and even so the Tory front bench seem incapable of understanding this point. I now fear that the Tories (for all their fine words on cancelling ID cards) are just looking forward to using all these authoritarian powers for their own purposes. Well, a bully boy Tory state is, frankly, no improvement on what we have now and if that's what on offer from the Tories (coupled with this pathetic attempt at soundbites), I despair.

Grayling said recently that he was going to focus less on theoretical civil liberties. That shows the shallowness of his thinking: they are not theoretical. The right to privacy is not theoretical - and yet this is being taken away by ID cards, the Contact Database, the proposal to monitor my email traffic and phone calls (what next? Opening my post?). The right not to be spied on by public servants is not a theoretical right. The right to freedom of speech is not a theoretical right. These are real and their degrading by Labour have led to a much worse state and a poorer quality of life and debate than we used to have. And all this has been coupled with a wholesale failure to deal with crime, which does not necessitate all these measures. If Grayling does not understand this then he has no business being a Conservative spokesman on Home affairs.

Chris

Pete @ 18:21 - Chris: thanks for the spot. Corrected now.

Thanks for the thanks, but it's (as in it's) still wrong on my screen at 22:19.

colin

"How else to describe an approach on crime?"

Er... how about: Instead of banal, undeliverable, wishy washy soundbites; here are the specifics of the laws we'll repeal to increase the rights of law abiding citizens, the specific actions we'll take against useless, right on chief constables and a list of prevalent offences that normal people, in normal communities want us to take urgent action on. Oh, and by the way, here's the timeframe for improvement - measured in months and low, single digit years.

When I read his speech and heard his waffle on the radio my heart sank. We want achievable, measurable, specifics, otherwise it's meaningless. He sounds just like any one of the labour wasters who've held the home secretary brief since 1997.