‘More bobbies on the beat’, cried Keir Starmer in his definitely-not-a-reset speech earlier today. But even when there are coppers out on patrol, are they doing enough to strike fear into lawless criminals? Just a stone’s throw away from The Spectator offices in Westminster is the Brutalist monstrosity of the Ministry of Justice’s headquarters. Known as Lubyanka – after the KGB headquarters – the address of 102 Petty France street is notorious for ruining the views of not one, but two nearby London parks.
Yet while aesthetics may not be the MoJ’s thing, you would hope that law and order actually is. But Mr S hears that wrong ‘uns are so emboldened these days in Sadiq Khan’s London that thieves are actually committing muggings in full sight of both the building and the fleet of police cars situated next to it. One Westminster worker tells Steerpike that on Tuesday night, one unsavoury character on a bicycle ‘grabbed the headphones off a poor lass directly outside the entrance to the Ministry of Justice. about a dozen police cars opposite, not an officer in sight.’
The ‘obviously distressed’ woman had had ‘a clump of hair’ ripped out and had to be ‘calmed down’ by the gentleman in question. The eyewitness fumed to Mr S that ‘phone thieves are now so brazen they are literally committing crimes on the front doorstep of the seat of law and order.’ Sounds like the MoJ should prosecute itself under the Trade Descriptions Act….
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