The Home Secretary is feeling the collars of our 43 chief constables. Shabanna Mahmood has let it be known that she favours a dramatic reduction in police forces in England and Wales to as few as 12. Her comments come ahead of the publication of a white paper on policing in the new year. The white paper has, in typical fashion, been delayed because – in a style now familiar to both her admirers and detractors – Mahmood wishes to be bolder than the many previous attempts to reform policing which have become stuck in the bureaucratic glue over the past few decades.

We do need urgent reform in policing but not simply in the dead language and terminology of the bean counter. The Policy Exchange review of Sir Mark Rowley’s mid-point tenure as Metropolitan Police Commissioner revealed that pu

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