Getting the measure of the police

Commentators are warning (for example here and here) of the big political risks the coalition is running in seeking to curb burgeoning police perks.

The vile Yvette Cooper clearly thinks there's mileage in this. She said figures for projected job losses were the "latest nail in the coffin for the prime minister's claim that he would protect the front line at all costs". (Did he say "at all costs"?)

Chief constables are being put in an impossible position by a government that seems happy to ride roughshod over public safety and the morale of the police force.

The government is cutting too far and too fast with 20% frontloaded cuts.

The home secretary and her ministers have a blind arrogance in their dealings with the police.

Rather than working with them, they are bludgeoning police numbers, their budgets and their operational capacity.

Of course Labour is against any cuts, anywhere, wherever they are proposed.

But she and the commentators may find they are wrong this time around. There simply isn't the uncritical public support for the police that there used to be.

We know they are clunky and expensive and have priorities which too often are not ours.

We know they are effectively unaccountable.

I suspect the public will be much readier this time around to believe that the police are feather-bedded.