What is Labour playing at with its attack ads on Rishi Sunak? - Bill Carmichael

But no, far from it. The party doubled down issuing a series of similar ads personally targeting Rishi Sunak and his wife, and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer later issued a statement saying that he “stood by every word”.

Just when you think that politics couldn’t descend any lower they come up with something even more despicable to prove you wrong.

Even Lord Blunkett, a former Labour Home Secretary, called for the advert to be withdrawn adding “it is deeply offensive to get down in the gutter to fight politics this way”.

I can’t imagine what Labour are playing at here. They are 20 plus points ahead in the opinion polls, and although it would be wrong to presume the next election is in the bag it would be fair to say they are hot favourites to form the next government.

All they had to do was stay calm, be sensible and at least act as though they are a credible alternative government.

Instead they come up with a completely crazy and obnoxious stunt like this which damages the party and Sir Keir’s personal reputation, and brings the whole of politics into disrepute.

The allegations in the ads are preposterous and provably wrong. They highlighted statistics showing that 4,500 adults convicted of sexually assaulting children under 16 had served no prison time between 2010 and 2022 and blamed Mr Sunak personally for this.

This is wrong on so many fronts. Firstly, prime ministers are not responsible for sentencing - judges are.

Secondly, Mr Sunak was not even an MP for the first five years when these statistics were collated, and only became Prime Minister at the end of October last year.

But it gets worse for Labour, because there is a sitting politician who does bear some responsibility for the current state of sentencing by the courts - and his name is Sir Keir Starmer.

Sir Keir was not only the Director of Public Prosecutions during part of this period, he also sat on the Sentencing Council which drew up the guidelines for judges which ruled that community sentences for sexual assault could be used as an alternative to prison.

If Sir Keir really wants to know who is soft on crime, he should take a look in the mirror.

And Labour must be absolutely bonkers to draw attention to child sexual abuse given the party’s appalling record on this issue.

Do they think we have forgotten that Labour-run councils, in Rotherham and many other towns and cities across Britain, were deeply implicated in dozens of child sex scandals when many thousands of very young girls were vilely abused by grooming gangs?

Do they really want to remind voters of this shameful blot on Labour’s record?

There is also a wider problem for Labour for the coming election fight. Sir Keir has positioned himself as the decent guy trying to bring some civility back into politics. But these ads, and Sir Keir’s defence of them, have seen the Labour leader fall off his moral high horse with a resounding thump.

When the political fight gets dirty, as it surely will, Labour will no longer be able to show a clean pair of hands.

Labour is right about one thing - the Conservative-led governments have been very soft on crime over the last 12 years resulting in big increases in certain crimes, such as sex offences, while the police seem to spend most of their time investigating hurty words on Twitter.

We know what works in reducing crime - prison does. Back in 1993, facing a rising wave of crime, the then Home Secretary Michael Howard introduced a tough sentencing policy that saw an extra 20,000 criminals put behind bars.

As a result crime fell from 19.1 million in 1995 to 12.6 million in 2001/2, but the current crop of Conservatives have forgotten this important lesson.

So, Sir Keir is right - the Conservatives are soft on crime. But we all know that Labour will be 10 times worse.