Reid ‘wants some Etonian blood on his hands’. But so does Brown

The most famous political quotations come not from politicians but the wickedness of headline writers. Although Jim Callaghan never said ‘Crisis? What crisis?’, the phrase stuck because it seemed to sum up perfectly his psychological denial during the Winter of Discontent. It was a newspaper, not Thomas Jefferson (or even Thomas Paine), which declared ‘that government is best which governs least’. So it scarcely matters that David Cameron never actually said ‘hug a hoodie’ — the words seemed a credible summation of his approach to crime. It is enough, anyway, for Labour to declare war.

When the Tory leader resurrected the theme last week with a new saying — ‘we have to show more love’ — he provided John Reid with the mission he had been waiting for. For some time the Home Secretary has been looking for an excuse to engage in some hand-to-hand combat with Mr Cameron. He still has his eye on the party leadership, and his chances will be significantly augmented if he can well and truly savage Mr Cameron. As one of his allies charmingly put it, ‘John wants some Etonian blood on his hands’.

So it is sheer good luck for Mr Reid that the Queen’s Speech next week — which will launch a tranche of Home Office legislation — has come at a time when Mr Cameron has decided to try to prove the media wrong about hoodies. His message is one he regards as integral to his own brand of conservatism: that the roots of crime lie in social breakdown. And while the media may mock this claim, he has been emboldened by Tory focus groups which allegedly suggest public sym-pathy with it. He believes the media are out of step with popular opinion, and I am told he will keep repeating this message until the press sees the error of its ways.