November 04, 2003, 9:58 a.m.
Britain’s Rudy
Michael Howard, vindicated and on the rise.

LONDON — Four years ago I considered the unexpected and perverse failures of two distinguished politicians — one British and one American. Both had succeeded in cutting crime rates by bold policies. And both had politically suffered from their success.

This column had itself been prompted by a letter from one of these politicians. Britain's former home secretary (a sort of combination of attorney general and homeland-security czar in American terms), Michael Howard, had written to correct a statement of mine in an earlier Sun-Times column that crime in Britain had risen steadily in recent years. He civilly objected that though there had indeed been a rise in British crime beginning in the Sixties, that had been halted and reversed during his time as home secretary. Howard's claim turned out to be entirely justified. The figures bore him out. Indeed, crime had actually fallen by 18 percent under his stewardship. And I wrote as much in the column.

But that exchange led to a curious English mystery worthy of Agatha Christie: if Howard had succeeded in the task that every voter wants done, why had he left office in such odium? He was regarded as such a liability to the Tory government in the 1997 election that the campaign organizers kept him off television. And when he ran for the Tory leadership following John Major's resignation, he came fifth in a field of five. At the time I wrote my column, he had retired to the parliamentary backbenches — and his political career was regarded by most people as over and done with.

What was the explanation? In the column I advanced the speculation that Howard had fallen in public esteem because he had brought down crime by the "wrong" methods — namely, by imposing minimum prison sentences for career criminals, by attaching conditions such as night-time curfews to paroles for juvenile offenders, and by denying parole altogether for those considered a danger to the public. "Prison works" was the slogan that seemed to sum up his approach.

Those policies (and the fall in crime they produced) were popular enough with the voters. Indeed, they reflected the social commonsense of the average person. But they were highly unpopular with the legal and social science elites that had dominated policy on crime and prisons even under Tory governments until Howard.

In particular Howard alienated judges by reducing their discretion to vary sentences (which they generally had used to lower them). He offended penal reformers by increasing the prison population rather than using their favored "non-custodial" punishments. And he outraged their liberal allies in the media when he pointed out with harsh logic that even if prison were not a deterrent — which, of course, it is — longer sentences still would cut crime since criminals are not able to mug and rape while they are behind bars.

As a result, Howard suffered extraordinary vilification. Judges delighted in overturning his decisions when they could; civil servants leaked hostile stories to the media; and the liberal press denounced him for "pandering" to the voters' supposedly exaggerated fears of crime.

This campaign by the elites drowned out the actual success of Howard's policies. And he left office as damaged goods — a "controversial" figure who was shunned even my many of his own party.

Couldn't happen here? Think again. My column was written not long after the Amadou Diallo affair in New York when an extraordinary outburst of liberal hysteria blamed the death of Diallo on the policies of Mayor Rudy Giuliani that had similarly brought down crime by similarly tough policies that discredited liberal platitudes on penal policy. There was no evidence for a link between Diallo's death and Giuliani's anti-crime policies and certainly no evidence that the police were trigger-happy. Police shootings in New York had actually fallen from 344 to 249 in the previous three years — reaching the second-lowest figure since 1973 when records began to be kept.

Yet at the time not a single national Republican stepped forward to defend Giuliani from this vilification. The media joined in. And New Yorkers began to desert him in the polls.

September 11 changed all that. They voters saw Giuliani responding to a crisis directly and not through the distorting prism of elite media commentary and "analysis." New York's former mayor is now rightly seen as a strong political leader who tackles problems in a pragmatic and courageous way even if it means offending liberal (or conservative) elites. He is very likely a strong contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.

And this coming Thursday Michael Howard will be elected unopposed as the next leader of the Tory party and as Leader of Her Majesty's loyal Opposition (as I partly predicted last week — I wrote that he and David Davis would be contenders for the crown; but Davis withdrew when the extent of Howard's support became clear.)

Howard's return to public favor was less dramatic than Giuliani's but, in a sense, more appropriate. He is the beneficiary of two important political developments. First, crime is rising again under New Labor to heights even higher than in the U.S. Second, the New Labor home secretary is belatedly adopting the very same policies that Howard employed to reduce crime a decade ago. Even the liberal elites who denounced Howard then now admit his vindication through gritted teeth.

In addition, of course, Howard possesses important qualities that persuaded Tory MPs he could lead them to victory against a strongly entrenched but increasingly distrusted government. He is a brilliant debater, a fine legal mind, and a sensible non-ideological moderate Tory who will appeal to Middle England the better they get to know him. (He is also, incidentally, a friend of America and a strong Atlanticist who founded Atlantic Partnership in his time on the backbenches in order to preserve good U.S.-European relations.)

Above all, however, like Giuliani he has shown courage by sticking with the right policies against vicious elite disdain and unthinking popular hostility. Even more than his vindication, that marks him out as a strong party leader, a potential prime minister — and as the man to shake British politics out of its recent and atypical torpor.

— John O'Sullivan is editor of The National Interest and a National Review editor-at-large. This was first ran in the Chicago Sun-Times and is reprinted with permission. O'Sullivan can be reached through Benador Associates.