The record of both the Conservatives and Labour on combating crime has been terrible - Andrew Vine

As is usual in most places you go, I saw no police either on foot or in a patrol car, so the yobs and the drunks were free to make busy streets unpleasant and even menacing.

And so our only option is to hurry away from it and wonder why nothing ever seems to get done about stuff like this, which blights all our towns and cities, when everybody wishes the anti-social would get thrown into the back of a police van and carted off, leaving the rest of us to enjoy our shopping or socialising in peace.

Doing something about it is the subject of the current bout of arm-wrestling between the Conservatives and Labour over who would be tougher on crime and anti-social behaviour.

Last week it was Labour promising 13,000 more community police officers and action to address abysmal conviction rates, especially for offences against women.

Yesterday it was the Conservatives’ turn, with promises of “hotspot” policing, “short and sharp” punishments and the criminalisation of laughing gas, the abuse of which is driving bad behaviour by some young people.

The familiar tussle over law and order is the surest possible sign that campaigning for the next election is getting under way, as being seen as soft on crime is a killer at the ballot box.

But there is a hollow ring to the pronouncements from both parties, because we’ve heard it all before.

Who you believe will clean up the streets and catch more predators on women or burglars probably depends on your existing party loyalties, since the records of both the Conservatives and Labour on combating crime over the course of decades are equally terrible.

Any of us with longish memories can recall them talking tough but achieving little. Yesterday’s threat of “short and sharp” punishments was almost a straight copy of the 1979 Conservative assertion that “short, sharp shocks” for offenders would bring crime down. They didn’t.

Almost two decades after that, a fresh-faced Tony Blair came to office in 1997 promising to be “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”. He wasn’t.

Despite all the stern-faced home secretaries and their shadows who have assured us down the years that the villains and public nuisances would be brought to book, crime and anti-social behaviour have grown steadily worse.

Detection and conviction rates are disgraceful even for the most serious offences, particularly rape, with only one in 10 offences committed in some areas of the country resulting in anybody being caught or prosecuted.

If your home is broken into, or your car stolen, the overwhelming odds are that the culprits will get away with it. You may not even be visited by a police officer.

The new policies from both the Conservatives and Labour amount to tinkering around the edges of law and order, when what is needed is massive new investment, especially in policing, along with work to identify young people at risk of being drawn into crime or anti-social behaviour and rehabilitation to reduce reoffending.

If police forces had sufficient resources, they could get officers out onto the street and into neighbourhoods, to act as a visible deterrent to crime, and yes, to cart away yobs and drunks blighting shopping streets.

Currently they do not have anything like enough officers, the legacy of cuts by successive Conservative prime ministers going back more than a decade, which undermines the party’s claim to be the champion of law and order.

Long-term support and a reliable regular police presence are what areas with problems need.

Talking tough won’t cut crime or anti-social behaviour. Only a properly thought-out plan and the money to implement it will make our communities and streets the places we want them to be.