Express & Star comment: Attitude to crime may fell Tories

Since then we have had yet another dire set of crime figures, showing not only that violent crime is out of control but that the murder rate in the West Midlands has rocketed by almost a third in the year to June.

It will be no surprise to anyone – not least senior officers and police and crime commissioners – if the next set of figures are even worse.

In recent weeks we have seen Deputy Chief Constable Louisa Rolfe admit that members of the public have been told to let criminals go because there are no officers available to deal with them.

Crime Commissioner David Jamieson announced that budget cuts to his force have hit £175 million in real terms since 2010.

And an exasperated Chief Constable Dave Thompson warned that he may need to get rid of 500 officers due to a seemingly ill thought out Treasury plan to increase force pension contributions.

Now Mr Thompson has warned that offenders are fully aware that the force no longer has the resources available to bring them to book.

It is yet another low on the lawless streets of the West Midlands, where criminals have the upper hand and the law-abiding public are left to suffer.

With Chancellor Philip Hammond due to present his Budget statement on Monday, it will be interesting to see if anyone in Downing Street has been paying attention to the crime wave that is suffocating Britain’s streets.

Theresa May certainly appears to have taken her eye off the ball.

The Prime Minister has been so preoccupied with tweaking her botched Brexit plan, that she does not seem to have noticed that people are getting killed at the highest rate for a decade.

Mr Hammond should realise that without the necessary support, it won’t be long before a police force starts to fail, not just in terms of dealing with crime, but also financially.

He should also be aware that if the Tories abject failure on law and order continues, people are unlikely to forgive the party next time the country heads to the polls.