Reform UK's crime fiction

Violent crime is falling- so Farage has invented a crisis, then those who point to the data

Insurgent right-wing parties thrive when people are worried about law and order, especially when linked to immigration. But how to pull this off in a country where violent crime has been demonstrably falling for years? Reform UK has been pioneering a fascinating and audacious tactic: use new media to paint a false picture of a migrant-driven crimewave. Then present yourself as the solution to a crime surge that does not exist. Then dismiss, as an elitist, anyone who challenges.

This isn’t as crazy as it sounds. A new media environment makes it easier to manufacture narratives, especially ones that people are inclined to believe. And polls im UK and US show people always think crime is rising even when it’s falling: no one ever sees falling crime. This allows a daring, entirely-dishonest form of politics: use perception-based political narratives, no longer anchored to reality. The old days - where newspaper reporters would interrogate claims and puncture false ones - are gone. Newspapers account for a small share of the news market; TV news tends to be broad-brush. The biggest news source now is a social media, where shocking stories get the most follow with no expectation for perspective.

Nigel Farage pioneered this last summer with his “lawless Britain” campaign, fabricating a problem to which he presented Reform UK as the solution. Take back control of the streets! He returned to the theme last week in a press conference, announcing Leila Cunningham as Reform UK’s candidate for London Mayor. They then reprised their theme that crime is surging, that she wants to take London back to where it was when she was growing up in the 1990s when (according to her) the capital’s streets were very safe. “London is now in the grip of a crime wave run by foreign criminal gangs,” he said. She laid into Sadiq Khan. “Stop and search halved - and violent crime rose.” Etc.

I’ve been keeping an eye on this for a while and the crime data section of this website assembles the various metrics. I had, perhaps foolishly, believed Reform had given up this mendacious campaign - and eventually, a question came about the actual figures. Here it is:-

From the FT’s Anna Gross point out the problem with their crime narrative (my hyperlinks).

“London’s murder rate is the lowest for decades. It’s much lower than Chicago, New York and LA. Knife crime has fallen sharply over the past ten years. The proportion of adults who have been victims of personal crime is the lowest since 2002. Do both of you admit that, across lots of critical metrics, London has actually become a much safer city?

Farage’s “Lawless Britain” campaign is based on the hope he will never encounter a sustained, well-informed challenge on the facts. So how to deal with this challenge, if directly presented in some detail in a press conference?

Cunningham started to answer, but Farage cut her off - perhaps remembering what happened the last time she was challenged in this way (by Times Radio). The way out of a fact-based question is to refuse to engage, angrily reject the premise, attack the facts as false; attack the person presenting the facts and then quickly move on.

So Farage launches into an attack on “the great and the good - the Fraser Nelsons of this world”, who cite crime figures. But “there are two different sets of data,” he said: the Crime Survey of England & Wales. Police-crime statistics show ‘a massive expansion in crime of all kinds’ and then you have to factor in ‘vast under-reporting of crime’ so ‘this interpretation is wrong.’ Most crime are unreported, but this is improving. Better reporting has the superficial effect of pushing crime numbers higher. That’s why police-reported crime figures are not designed to be comparable year-on-year. But you can create mischief by doing it anyway.

This is how Farage tries to dodge scrutiny: by claiming only the warped Crime Survey of England & Wales shows a decline - then pronouncing it to be wrong. Then saying nothing about murder or hospital data. He’s right about most crime was going unreported. That’s why Thatcher set up the Crime Survey asking 30,000 households about their experience: to gauge actual levels. To produce a genuinely comparable crime set showing long-term trends. To work out how much crime going unreported. It’s the most extensive survey of its kind in Europe and it shows a trend that makes a mockery of the populist narrative about crime and immigration.

If the immigrants are the problem, why is crime going down? But it’s not, says Farage, the crime survey is wrong! Except the Crime Survey of England & Wales (CSEW) is backed up by all over various measurements of crime, as attested by extensive research by scholars at Cardiff University’s Violence Reduction Unit. Farage is wrong to say there are just two sets of data: there are several. And three main ones: surveyed crime, reported crime, hospital data (for assault, etc). The Cardiff scholars talk of a ‘triangulation’ of these three: the below from their latest report. My emphasis.

The triangulation - which, with CSEW and police measures, this [hospital] measure of violence provides - demonstrates over the past two and a half decades that serious violence in England and Wales has decreased substantially. This message needs to be much better known, not least because it reflects better prevention and because fear of violence, often stoked by reports of rare tragic violent events, corrodes individual and community wellbeing.

Selling fear

The latter point is important. But as Farage once said, the art of politics “is about selling ideas, it’s about selling hope - it’s about selling fear.” So reject facts as false. “I don’t know where you get the knife crime data,” said Leila Cunningham, who chided the journalist for a “disrespectful” and even “dangerous” challenging of her narrative.

So where do the knife crime figures come from? Another reliable indicator: NHS hospitals in London treating people with knife wounds. It’s plunging.

NHS hospital data is consistent and reliable - but it is very hard to excavate. And as far as I’m aware, the only place you’ll ever see the above graph is on this SubStack, which I do as a hobby. The Home Office should update it monthly and make it very easy to find, so any journalist hearing sensationalist claims can search it up, find and ask.

Newspapers - and the shrinking of the fact-based readership

A wider game is at play here. Politically, and all over Europe, fear of migrant-driven violence is what populist-right needs to win votes. Only recently has Reform UK started to deploy the European-style populist playbook, coupled with attacks on the ‘elitists’ the ‘great and the good’ who spoil things with their data.

And if newspapers who do challenge the narrative: well, who reads newspapers anymore? Farage was questioned by an FT journalist: who out there can afford a £700-a-year subscription to the FT? Even The Times, my newspaper, is £30 a month. Worth every penny and they plough that cash into investigations and in-depth coverage - but if it’s all behind a paywall, how many will ever find out what’s really happening to crime?

The risk is that newspapers become an intelligence service for a small number of rich people and TV tends to be too broad-brush. So this opens a window for charlatans, allows more potential for narratives to concocted and spread by social media. Goodbye reports. Hello more engaging ‘stories’. Old clips, dressed up as new. Elon Musk, proprietor of X, is actively promoting this Gotham worldview as a selling point. Every media has a worldview.

Musk’s is one of Muslim invasion, migrant-driven crime, a covering-up establishment, ‘the rape of Britain’ etc. Only X tells you the horrid truth! This is as much a political agenda as sold by any far-right party. It works as all of this gets the most ‘engagement’ on social. Reform is more Facebook than Twitter. Buy the below Ofcom survey shows more Brits get news from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter than any newspaper.

Reform are doing good work in giving voters a choice and issuing effective challenge in lots of areas. Farage is the target of the racist far-right: just look at the reaction to his hiring Nadhim Zahwai. Or even Cunningham, a Muslim mum of seven. She is an articulate and interesting; I’m glad she’s on the scene. But if she focused on the (many) real problems, she’d be on far stronger ground. Reform UK’s segue into fake news and fake narratives is a mistake as the truth will eventually come out. As today’s Times reveals, London has announced the lowest murder rate on record.

As to the wider battle for perspective, it’s easy how those interested in balance can respond. The simple act of data availability counters fake news in the social-media era. Government officials are still using old hierarchy: they think inviting TikTokers into press conferences is the way to do it. No. Just make the truth easier to find: so easy that anyone, in a few searches, can find it. The fight, as it stands, is imbalanced. This deranged London Has Fallen narrative can be seen worldwide, at a time when the city has never been safer.

And yes, shoplifting and snatch theft have risen. Crime always bubbles up in certain areas; laws are changed, police respond then the next crisis begins. The UK still has far too much crime. Bike theft is plunging but is still far too high. The police-recorded figures are rising: a result of the gap closing between crime reported and actual crime. But this needs to be better explained. The police’s own data infrastructure is in the dark ages, made worse by a decade of negligile capital investment. This is, in part, what makes fake crimewave narratives easier to spin.

The truth never speaks for itself: it needs advocates. And needs to be unlocked, released from the prison of unreadable spreadsheets. If you need to be Sherlock Holmes to find the truth about London murder or knife crime hospitalisations, don’t be surprised if the fake news prevails - and is exploited by people seeking political or financial capital. Farage may make hay with ‘Lawless Britain’ fiction: for now.

A politics built on fear can thrive only while the facts are hard to see. Make the data visible, timely and unavoidable - and the spell breaks. Crime in Britain is not low enough, but nor is it spiralling out of control due to immigrants. The real danger is not complacency about crime, but denial about truth. Voters tend to work this out in the end. “Lawless Britain” works only in the dark. Switch the lights on, and it starts to dissolve.