So the question now is: Will he cave in to Downing

So the question now is: Will he cave in to Downing Street’s conservatism, or does he have the nerve to try to redefine our debate about crime?j.hari independent.co.uk
More from Johann Hari. I am very pleased to announce that we have secured the services of Mr David Blunkett to help with today’s column. Since Labour has accepted the “toughness” frame, they have no answer. If you accept toughness as the test of your policies, why not adopt the toughest policy of all?The new Home Secretary could try to change the frame instead. Labour could ask: Are boot camps a smart policy? Do they actually reduce crime? We know the answer from decades of academic research; boot camps turn out even more bitter young men even more determined to trash the society they live in “Tough” is “dumb” “Soft” is “smart”.Or look at another issue: heroin. The “tough” thing to do with heroin addicts is plunge them into cold turkey in a small cell for a long time. But tough is once more dumb: this approach simply warehouses addicts and makes them more desperate when they get out.

The “soft” policy is to prescribe heroin to people whose bodies have become completely dependent on it. In the areas of Switzerland where this has been piloted, burglary has fallen by an incredible 70 per cent. That’s smart policy, and it would make every one of us safer.The current obsession with macho man talk guarantees that even when smart policies are introduced, they have to be done by stealth and never publicly defended. Instead of talking about policies as “tough” v “soft”, the debate needs to be about “effective” v “ineffective” policies (Or, if you want to be more populist, “smart” v “stupid”) This becomes clear if we look at concrete policies. Once Labour politicians began to accept this right-wing frame – as Blair did in opposition – they set off on a road that led directly to stuffed jails, drug wars and internment.The task for centre-left politicians is to change the frame. When it comes to young offenders, the “toughest” thing to do is establish boot camps that brutalise and terrify young criminals That’s precisely what the Tories are now proposing to do. Every political issue has a frame: a language and set of assumptions that underpin any discussion.

The Tory frame for law and order is to divide policies into “tough” and “soft”. It’s a form of language rigged in their favour – who wants to be “soft” on muggers, burglars or rapists? Hard talk can only lead one way. The crackdown on domestic violence and the rise of anti-social behaviour orders both help some of the most vulnerable people in this country ID cards are not the tools of tyranny many people imagine. The American political theorist, George Lakoff, has pioneered the concept of “framing”. But the balance is still with Daily Mail-pleasing drivel.This shift towards authoritarianism within the Labour Party stretches back to a strategic error when Tony Blair was shadow Home Secretary in 1992. A Home Secretary can reintroduce internment, send refugees back to tyrannies to be tortured and murdered, and recite wild lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; no problem. But sleep with a married woman and try to keep a Filipina nanny in the country? Now that’s going too far

Well, here’s a moment to be proud of.

Massive sums of money and police hours are being squandered on shoring up the “war on drugs”, while other European countries are moving sensibly towards treating addicts rather than attacking them.Sure, not every government initiative should be rejected by progressives. This means that rehabilitation and education programmes – the policies that really bring down crime – have to stumble on with precious little funding. The decisions by the new Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, will change the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Isn’t it time we talked about them?The tensions within New Labour’s law and order policies – between liberal and authoritarian instincts – were neatly dramatised yesterday, on the very day Clarke went to the Home Office. Enough now with the adultery-and-visa trivia; I never want to hear Kimberly Quinn’s name again. They hope that Ruth Kelly, his successor, will breathe new life into the modernisation programme by giving parents more choice and raising standards further.In the pre-election period, Mr Blair wants to remind voters that his “education, education, education” mantra has not been abandoned.One of Mr Blair’s unnoticed qualities is his ability to turn setbacks into opportunities.