Theresa May is lying again

Every single week it's the same story at Prime Ministers' Questions. No matter what questions Jeremy Corbyn, Ian Blackford, and other opposition MPs ask Theresa May, all they ever get in return is a barrage of badly-scripted evasions, smears, misdirections, and outright lies.

On April 10th 2019 Theresa May told a particularly egregious PMQs lie when she claimed that her Tory government "have been protecting police funding".

This isn't just deception, it's an outright lie. The Office For National Statistics found that since 2010 central government funding for the police has been reduced by 30%, resulting in an overall 19% decline as local police forces have sought to plug the worst of the gaps with increased Council Tax funds (one of the many reasons Council Tax bills keep going up under this ruinous Tory government).

Here are some of the consequences of this unprecedented Tory assault on police funding.

• 20,000+ police jobs scrapped since 2010 [source]

• 40% of Police Community Support Officer jobs scrapped since 2010 [source]

• An 18% reduction in overall police workforce since 2010 [source]

• More than 600 police stations shut down, and entire towns left without police stations [source]

• UK per capita police numbers at the lowest since the 1970s [source] 

• Soaring violent crime rates, especially knife crime, murder/manslaughter, mugging, and sexual offences [source]

• Tory police cuts severely hampering counter-terrorism efforts. [source]

• 91% of crimes resulting in nobody being charged [source]

One of the most extraordinary things about Theresa May's lie that the Tories have been protecting police funding is that as Home Secretary she had no qualms about openly bragging about her cuts agenda, and even accused police and crime experts of "scare-mongering" and "crying wolf" when they warned that her cuts agenda would eventually lead to rising crime.

But now that the devastating consequences of this unprecedented ideologically-driven Tory assault on police funding are feeding through (soaring violent crime, rampant gang culture, huge numbers of uninvestigated crimes, entire towns and cities turned into no-police zones, the increased risk of terrorism ...) Theresa May has had to change her tune.

She's no longer bitterly attacking police and crime experts for warning that her police cuts agenda would result in negative consequences becuase those negative consequences are completely undeniable, she's outright denying that her police cuts agenda even took place!

The worst thing about this is that huge numbers of Tory tribalists will continue to mindlessly believe the absolute fantasy that they're supporting 'the party of law and order' despite the vast mountain of evidence of the Tories' ideological assault on policing over the last nine years, and the fact that Theresa May has blatantly switched from denying that her cuts agenda would have negative outcomes, to barefaced Orwellian lying that her unprecedented police cuts agenda just didn't take place at all!

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