Law-and-order populism usually tests well in the abstract, and so it proves here, with the Crime and Policing Act's grab-bag of respect orders, retail-worker offences and warrantless entry powers clearing two to one. But the aggregate hides a striking asymmetry: this was not a nation united behind tougher policing, it was the confident middle-aged and older, and women especially, carrying a much more ambivalent younger and male electorate with them.
Women backed the Act by a landslide, four to one, while men were essentially split down the middle. Age tells a similar story in miniature — voters in their fifties and sixties were the most enthusiastic bloc, at four to one, while the youngest cohort and those in their thirties and forties each divided close to fifty-fifty. The generational and gender pattern together suggest this reads less as a verdict on Conservative-versus-Labour law and order politics than as a split between those who feel most exposed to antisocial behaviour and shop theft, and those more wary of expanding police powers of entry, arrest and testing.
That fault line — public safety against civil liberties, respect orders and stop-and-search-adjacent powers against due process — has run through policing legislation since the 2014 Act this one partly repeals, and it recurs here in familiar shape.
A comfortable win for the Act, but one built on the votes of the reassured rather than the young or male voters who might expect to feel its new powers most directly.
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