by Kemi Badenoch, Leader of the Conservative Party
We can see it everywhere - from the recent looting by hordes of children and teenagers, to the explosion in welfare dependency, to the tide of small-boat arrivals that mock our border controls on a daily basis. They’re all symptoms of the same disease: the collapse of consequences in British life.
All of us were shocked by the phone footage of children smashing up shops in broad daylight, stealing, laughing, filming themselves as though it were a game.
Some commentators immediately reached for a racial explanation, but that was to miss the point completely.
While the majority of young looters in Clapham, south London, seemed to have Caribbean or African heritage, the fact is that children in Lagos and Nairobi do not behave that way.
Why? Because in Nigeria and Kenya the boundaries are clear and actions have consequences. Parents, communities and authorities do not wring their hands or look the other way. It’s a lesson we’ve forgotten here.
Over time, Britain has convinced itself that crime, idleness and bad behaviour are things to be explained away rather than clamped down upon. We are building a culture in which people think they can do whatever they like - and that nothing will happen in response. All too often, they are right.
We didn’t get here overnight. For years, there has been a drip, drip, drip of institutional and cultural change, not least the belief that social programmes matter more than tough enforcement in maintaining discipline. I profoundly disagree.
What was London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s answer to the Clapham looting? An extra £30million for youth clubs in London, as if children and teenagers smash up shops because there’s nowhere to play table tennis.
In today’s Britain, looting is treated as a response to poverty. Or it’s ‘racism’, ‘inequality’ or whatever Labour and their Left-wing counterparts in the Greens decide to come up with.
Yet crime and disorder are not always a cry for help - sometimes they are laughter in the face of authority.
It’s no wonder the police are at the end of their tether. Last year, almost 4,500 officers quit before they had completed their probation. Walking a beat in Croydon last month, I asked the sergeant escorting me about his main frustration.
His reply echoed the feelings of my local officers in Essex. They are tired of arresting the same people week in week out only to see them get off scot-free, or be released just a few weeks later.
There is a way forward, of course, and it’s called enforcement. It’s not as if there’s a shortage of rules in Britain, after all - it’s the failure to apply them that’s the problem.
There’s a surprising lesson here to be learnt from a decline in some more serious crimes. If you murder someone today, for example, you are much more likely to be caught than in the past.
Better forensics, cameras, data, phones - better everything in fact - mean a killer is likely to be jailed. In other words, the terrible crime of murder has a clear and largely inescapable consequence - so the murder rate is going down.
Yet the same does not apply to the tide of ‘every day’ crimes washing over our high streets, the crimes people actually witness, such as shoplifting and phone snatching.
For too many petty criminals, the worst that could happen is a disapproving look from bystanders or, if they’re really unlucky, a grainy clip of their actions on social media.
We appear to have forgotten the simple truth that more people will commit crimes if they believe they can get away with it.
And that’s why the grubby offences that make life feel shabby and lawless are on the rise.
Shoplifting has become an epidemic, with 530,000 offences recorded in the 12 months ending in March last year, which is the highest figure since 2023, when records began.
Public disorder is ever harder to contain. Street crime is more brazen. Serious cases are delayed in our overcrowded courts. Prisons are short of space. Sentences are softened.
Rules do exist, yet the people breaking them do not[ital] fear prompt, credible consequences. Meanwhile, politicians focus on making yet more laws that won’t be policed. The number of rules rises faster than the capacity to enforce them, compliance becomes optional and, for the authorities, it becomes easier to police petty offences - driving at 21mph, for example - than catching real criminals.
We see the same lack of consequences when it comes to those who enter Britain illegally. The small boats and lorry loads keep arriving, whereupon yet more illegal migrants follow.
This is why the Conservatives’ Rwanda plan was so critical.
Just the threat of deportation to central Africa was a deterrent in itself, with illegal migrants reportedly bypassing Britain and going to Ireland instead. When Keir Starmer scrapped Rwanda as threat, small boat crossings hit new highs and asylum claims reached record levels.
Our increasing addiction to ‘welfareism’ is another facet of the same problem. If people believe there are no consequences for not working, their behaviour changes accordingly.
The result is a double unfairness. Those who follow the rules carry the burden of paying for the indolent, while those who do not contribute are free to shirk their obligations.
Last week we learned for the first time that Britain now pays more in welfare than we earn in income tax. That the rider is heavier than the horse.
In some cases, people claiming sickness benefits can be better off than someone working full-time on the minimum wage. Is it any surprise that there are now 3.7million Universal Credit claimants with no requirement to work? Or that around one million young people are not in education, employment or training?
Welfare should be a safety net, not a lifestyle. But if people can avoid work with no consequences, then expect more people to go on benefits. That’s just common sense.
Yet this government’s answer is to expand entitlement still further - and tax working people yet more heavily to pay for it! Today, Labour is the party for welfare and it is the Conservatives who are the workers’ party.
When people ask me why I’m a Conservative, my answer is that it’s because I believe in personal responsibility. This is the single most important principle, and the one that distinguishes us from every other political party at Westminster. Conservatives are putting it at the heart of everything we do.
Crime, for example, is not something that just happens, like bad weather. People make choices - and in a serious country, bad choices must carry consequences.
This is, above all, about fairness. When wrongdoing goes unpunished, the cost does not simply vanish in a puff of smoke. Instead, it falls on the people who do follow the rules. The shopkeeper pays. The commuter pays. The taxpayer pays. The law-abiding majority pay.
This is why Conservative policy goes beyond more investment in police officers - important as that is - but embraces a shift in priorities, too.
We need public acceptance that police officers are not social workers and must focus on deterrence and enforcement.
It means restoring punishments that people actually believe in. Sentences must be clear, swift and real. If ‘life’ does not mean a life sentence, it makes a mockery of sentencing.
Previous administrations had no underlying set of principles to work from - and failed as a result. As one arm of government brought in stricter laws to combat crime, for example, other tentacles were working to reduce cases going to courts because of a focus on rehabilitation and ‘community justice’.
This is why I am changing the Conservative Party so that we start from principles which everyone understands.
We will take back control of sentencing policy, abolish the justice department’s Sentencing Council and return responsibility to the Lord Chancellor and, ultimately, Parliament itself.
We will ensure the British State concentrates on its most basic job, which is keeping order, catching criminals and protecting the public. Not trying to be everyone’s therapist, careers adviser or youth worker.
Police time should be spent on shoplifters, robbers, muggers and public disorder, not policing hurt feelings. No number of youth clubs can make up for the absence of enforcement.
We need the police to be visible which, in turn, means recruiting more officers. People need to see policemen and women on the streets, enforcing the law, not buried in paperwork.
None of this will fix itself, of course: it needs a plan - which is what the Conservatives’ Take Back Our Streets campaign is all about. It’s about how we get Britain working again to deliver a stronger economy and a stronger country.
If the problem is a collapse of consequences, our solution is to bring consequences back.
It also means facing up to some simple facts that too many politicians have avoided for too long: if people enter this country illegally, they must be removed, for example. If they are not, more will come.
If welfare pays more than work, people will drift out of the labour market.
And that across society, if the rules are not enforced, they will not be followed.
None of this is complicated. But it does require seriousness. It also requires a government willing to take decisions that are sometimes difficult and perhaps unpopular in the short term.
It requires an electorate willing to accept the trade-offs that come with enforcing standards.
And it requires a return to a principle that used to be common sense: that actions have consequences, and that those consequences are what make a free country work.
We can continue on the current path, where bad behaviour is explained away as a lack of youth clubs. But we all know the result of that: it’s the law-abiding who will pay the price.
I say, let’s choose something different. Let’s choose a country where the police protect the public, not political correctness. Where sentences mean what they say. Where the system backs those who do the right thing.
And where anyone who breaks the rules knows exactly what will happen next.
