LONDON — Nigel Farage wants to use Britain’s next election to hammer the government on law and order. That’s got ministers scrambling to mount a fightback.

The Reform UK leader — who has already made a running on the hot-button issue of immigration — has warned that parts of Britain are facing “societal collapse.” 

His right-wing populist party has been pushing the slogan “Britain is Lawless” — and now the U.K. government is planning a series of announcements to prove Farage wrong.

It’s a tough ask for a government that’s trailing Farage in the polls and is presiding over public services in a state of disarray.

In the coming weeks, ministers will pitch a blueprint for a major police reform as one answer to tackling street crime. Labour MPs are already sending out leaflets to constituents highlighting details of their named neighborhood police officer.

The government is “making sure our streets are policed, which is something the previous government just failed to do,” Policing Minister Sarah Jones argues on this week’s POLITICO Westminster Insider podcast. Jones said the shake-up will “make sure the police are doing the things that we need them to be doing.”

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has meanwhile put Shabana Mahmood, who dealt directly with shoplifters while working in her parents’ corner shop, in charge of delivering the message as home secretary.

“I think she is absolutely the right person for this job, and I hope she’s really, really tough on it, because of her own background with her mum and dad running a shop,” said Labour peer and former political adviser Ayesha Hazarika.

Perceptions matter

Farage’s claims of lawlessness can prompt an exasperated response from ministers and officials who point to statistics, such as the Crime Survey of England and Wales, which suggest crime has broadly been falling for decades.

In September, London Mayor Sadiq Khan hit back at politicians “spreading misinformation” about safety in London, highlighting data showing a fall in violent crime in the capital. That came after U.S. President Donald Trump, an ally of Farage, said “crime in London is through the roof.”

But MPs — and ministers too — caution against being dismissive of voters’ lived experience. The narrative that crime is going down in London “infuriates my constituents,” said Margaret Mullane, the Labour MP for Dagenham and Rainham, part of Greater London. 

“It’s the personal experience, isn’t it? So if you hear that, you’ll think: Well that’s not my experience when I’m going in and out of work, or I’m popping up to Tesco, not that late in the evening, and I don’t feel safe.”

Hazarika, who has spoken about the issue in the House of Lords, said: “I think it is a real issue, and I do think it’s contributing to people really feeling like the country is broken when they see so much antisocial behavior.”

Hazarika’s parliamentary interventions have been informed by her own experience in Brixton, where she is part of a community group called Action on Anti-Social Behavior. The group was set up because of local concerns that included rife drug-taking, people defecating in public, violence against shopworkers and brazen shoplifting. 

While rejecting Farage’s “lawless” characterization, Jones accepts there is work to be done.

“It is undoubtedly the case that there is a bit of a mismatch on some of the perceptions versus the reality, but I think if you walk through the streets and you see rubbish in the streets, you can smell cannabis, you talk to a shopkeeper who’s just had somebody steal something, your bike gets stolen and the police don’t come and talk to you about it, of course that’s not right, and we need to fix all of those things,” she said. 

Delivering on the promise

“There will be a steady drumbeat of stuff coming up,” said one government official involved in discussions about the strategy, who was not authorized to speak on the record. “We’ve got to make a really persuasive case about the work that is going on to combat [street crime].” 

Reform UK can “whinge all they want,” the official said. “We’re focused on governing and getting our heads down and really trying to solve this problem, as opposed to shouting from the sidelines.”

But the upcoming announcements are likely to be focused on police reform — not on big spending. Police chiefs warned in June that their funding settlement from the Treasury would not be enough to fund the government’s ambitions.

Instead, there’s been reallocation. The government has already announced plans to ax directly elected police and crime commissioners — who have spent the past decade setting budgets, appointing chief constables and producing policing plans, but with limited democratic take-up. That role will be transferred to existing mayors or council leaders in a bid to “cut the cost of unnecessary bureaucracy” and invest back in the front lines.

Alastair Greig, research analyst for the Organised Crime and Policing Team (OCP) at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, said ​​it was important to recognize the “prioritization and the policy decisions that are involved if police decide to really meaningfully crack down on this street crime.“

“People that are pushing the narrative of British lawlessness and pointing to these low-level crimes need to be aware that if their proposals are acted on, then we may well see increases in other forms of serious and violent crime,” he warned.

Still, ministers believe reordering police priorities can really start to alter public perceptions.

“By reforming policing so that our police can focus on those physical crimes, respond to people, not necessarily always solve the crime, but keep people informed, tell them what they’re doing and let them know, then I think people will start to feel safer,” Jones argued.

With Farage breathing down their necks, ministers need all the help they can get.