Former special advisor: ‘Govt must be tough on woke policing’

Westminster must ensure that police chiefs enforce law and order rather than people’s preferred pronouns, a former advisor to Number 10 has said.

Rory Geoghegan, a former Special Advisor on Justice and Home Affairs from 2020 to 2022, called the Home Secretary’s push for the police to return to ‘common-sense policing’ the “morally and intellectually” correct move.

Last month, Home Secretary Suella Braverman KC MP criticised Leicestershire Police for misrepresenting the law on ‘hate crime’ in a tweet advising trans people to report the deliberate use of their ‘pre-transition’ name — so called ‘deadnaming’.

Priorities

Geoghegan said the public know streets will be safer “if we have enough police professionally doing what only the police can do (for the uninitiated: stopping, searching, investigating, arresting and charging criminals)”.

“Police chiefs need to crack down on those who, rather than fight crime, would prefer to shuffle paper, virtue signal, or choreograph dance moves for the next parade”, and politicians “must hold police chiefs to account for addressing these mainstream concerns, rather than allowing them to fixate on pronouns, privilege, and identity politics”.

He concluded that the Government “need to re-commit to being tough on crime and disorder — and no less tough on police chiefs”.

Undermining

To mark National Hate Crime Awareness Week in October, Leicestershire Police launched a campaign encouraging members of the public to report hate crime via its dedicated website, Stamp It Out.

The initiative featured the image of man called ‘Jane’ alongside the words: “I get called by my previous male name on purpose, but that’s not who I am. It can be really hurtful, especially when it’s just seen as a joke.”

In response, Braverman tweeted: “The public need to have confidence in their police forces. This sort of thing undermines it. Senior police officers who allow this to happen can expect to have to explain to me why they’re spending vital resources on politically correct campaigns.”

Following her intervention, Leicestershire Police deleted the tweet.