Tories and Labour face off in rush to the bottom for 'law and order'

It transpires that “adult politics” ­consists mostly of unveiling sweeping new ­crackdowns and slapdowns to keep the public’s spirits up as the public domain and public services continue to crumble.

In the media grid of British politics, the past fortnight has been “crime week” for the two main UK political parties, and it has been a hard-line, hi-viz pissing competition about who could promise the British public to inflict the most casual cruelty on petty criminals, the indigent, teenagers huffing laughing gas, litterers, asylum seekers emerging drenched and frozen from the English Channel and – a new suspect class on me – people engaging in “off-road biking in rural areas”. This kind of political ­bidding war is sometimes called “penal ­populism” and both Starmer and Sunak have been relentlessly raising the stakes.

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Westminster politics suffers from a ­crackdown complex. Dig through the ­record of successive prime ministers and home secretaries of every political ­persuasion and you’ll turn up diverse expressions of the same showboating drivel about ending Britain’s “passive tolerance” and “soft touch” attitude to everything from drug use to terrorism offences.

Successive Labour and Conservative ­politicians have spread this cheerfully vindictive sensibility across diverse other departments of the British state.

Dehumanising bureaucracy, administrative punishments and humiliation rituals are so intrinsic to the work not only of the Home Office but the Department for Work and Pensions. Good-hearted people will often say things like “Nobody wants other people to be humiliated”. But this flat-up isn’t true. Just open your eyes. British ­politics has a gannet’s appetite for cruelty in public policy. And the cruelty tends to escalate.

Once you realise that the pain and ­humiliation are the point, all you can offer is the prospect of more pain and greater humiliation. Whoever wins the next UK general election, it looks like the beatings will continue till public morale improves.

Tucked up in Number 10, Rishi Sunak not only recalled Suella Braverman to the Home Office – but taking his cue from her insatiable appetite for cruelty, has now unleashed a new wave of crackdowns and smackdowns.

Consider the record so far. In one of his first acts as our new sensible ­centrist Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt “launched a drive to halt an exodus from the ­British jobs market through a crackdown on ­benefit claimants”.

Alongside the ­Government’s plans to puncture small boats and effectively extinguish the rights of asylum seekers who reach our shores, ­Braverman has announced truculent beggars now will be rounded up and fined up to a grand for their infractions. Bank ­rosters will be scanned to ascertain whether asylum seekers have unauthorised accounts, and shut by government fiat.

The Home Office has now announced that “offenders will be made to wear jumpsuits or hi-vis jackets and work ­under supervision so that they are visible to members of the public, to assure them justice is being done”. Ritual humiliation, it seems, is the future.

Not content with dictating the ­fashion choices of folk doing community ­service, the party’s spokesman for ­sobriety ­Michael Gove recently took to the ­airwaves to condemn laughing gas, ­outlining the UK Government’s intention to criminalise possession of nitrous oxide.

Having been told by their own ­advisers that “the health and social harms of ­nitrous oxide are not commensurate with control under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971”, Sunak decided to proceed with full-fat criminalisation anyway, sending the cops after the youngsters who are most likely to be carrying this ­psychoactive substance.

Why? The main justification for ­doing so seems to be – a concern with litter. ­Po-faced Gove told the BBC: “We are ­doing this because if you walk through any urban park you will see these little silver cannisters which are the evidence of people regarding public spaces as arenas for drug taking.”

Because as we all know, the ­appropriate arena for scraping out your gourd is in a House of Commons toilet, a North ­London house party or in the office ­kitchen in a city bank or law firm.

Simultaneously, Sir Keir has set out his own laundry list of heinous crimes ­needing more vigorous persecution.

Politics is suffering from a crackdown complex

“Fly-tipping, off-road biking in rural areas, drugs – now, some people call this low-level, I don’t want to hear those words. There’s a family in my constituency – every night, cannabis smoke creeps in from the street outside into their ­children’s bedroom – aged four and six. That’s not low level – it’s ruining their lives,” he said.

Unless the kids have built an industrial suction device in their bedroom – this vignette from Holborn and St Pancras might strike you as a bit implausible, but extra credit is due to Starmer’s speechwriter for managing to depict a whiff of weed as a home-invading predator with designs on the nostrils of the primary school aged.

STARMER pledged “not to pull any punches” in dealing with these social ills – as if beating the bejesus out of an “unauthorised off-road biker” should strike the casual listener as an eminently proportionate response. Less horseshit gets shovelled at Royal Ascot.

Those of you who lived through the New Labour years are probably sharing the experience of being slurped down a time tunnel. Then as now, the Labour Party’s dearest wish is to replace one ­bigoted authoritarian in the Home Office with a mean trash talker of their own.

It is amazing what politicians will do and say to win the mantle of “the party of law and order”. This is the policy context behind Labour’s sensible centrist attack ad suggesting Sunak sympathises with child molesters.

In the wake of the post, the professional politics understanders logged on. And their take, in the main, is this kind of thing is all in good fun, it demonstrates admirable thuggery and a will to win on Labour’s part. Anyone who baulks at it is a faint-hearted squish who is bringing a fish-fork to a knife fight as Labour try to pry the Tories out of office after 13 long years. “Fire meet fire” Blair-era New ­Labour spinner John McTernan quipped.

Others argued that no political ­publicity is bad publicity – and if the ­commentariat is still yakking away about whether Sunak can credibly be described as ­objectively pro-paedophile, then Labour’s PR team have secured an important campaign win. Rejecting the backlash, ­another anonymous Labour ­henchperson explained the party had ­decided to ­“ignore the wailings of the kind of people who expect you to be kind losers and fight as viciously as the Conservatives do”.

The political diagnosis – that the Tory Party in the parliament and the press are prepared to peddle fantastic lies and slurs to retain power – is undoubtedly true. Successive Tory leaders and their media proxies have smeared their opponents as anti-British, unpatriotic, saboteurs, apologists for terrorists and foreign criminals.

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The Shadow Cabinet, nevertheless, are on defensive manoeuvres this weekend. Lucy Powell has described the ad as “not to everyone’s taste” but insisted it was “part of the cut-and-thrust of political debate” – as if qualms all came down to personal squeamishness.

There’s nothing sadder on this green earth than teenaged party functionnaires pretending to be hard bastards – but it’s hard to escape the conclusion that ­British media culture is marinaded in the sense that political lies and scare stories are to be judged mainly on their political ­efficacy. Lies are bad if they don’t work.

A working fiction – like “£350 ­million extra a week for the NHS” or an “oven-ready Brexit deal” – is just savvy ­ operating when it’s done by folk who know the score. The blind cynicism is breathtaking.