ABSTRACT
Tony Blair scored some quick successes and, despite increasingly frantic efforts, there appeared little Howard could do to outflank Labour on law and order. Blair's success lay in marrying Labour's traditional concerns about the deep-lying structural causes of crime with a new-found willingness to embrace a tough stance toward punishment. The crime survey suggested crime had peaked in the mid-1990s and had been falling for at least two full years by the time of the election victory. According to the crime survey, in the decade since its peak around 1995, vehicle theft and burglary had fallen by over half, violent crime by over 40% and vandalism by a quarter. The big difference between the two data sources was in relation to violence, the administrative changes to recorded crime statistics leading to what appeared to be a substantial rise in violent crime.
