BY FRANK HAVILAND

As some of our more myopic MPs will tell you, there’s never a copper around when you need one. They must be looking in the wrong places. Sadiq Khan tweets a good police cut, but always keeps half a dozen burly officers stashed under his mattress, ready to accompany him on walkabout around London. Never forget: ‘diversity is our strength’, except when it comes to bodyguard choice.

For Joe Public meanwhile, access to policing is easy, provided you can entice them out of hiding. Tweet, say, or think the wrong thing, and 900 of the Met Police’s finest ‘anti-hate experts’ will descend on you from the safety of their keyboards. You may even notch up a prosecution, albeit at £1.7M a pop.

You can argue about policing numbers certainly; what you can’t argue about is the fact that the fuzz has seriously lost its way, and is now consummately out-of-step with the public it alleges to serve.

It’s interesting in this regard to compare our current police with their small screen incarnations. No matter how outlandish they were, it’s modern policing that now looks like the ham act. Dixon of Dock Green, The Bill and even The Sweeney (provided they’d had their dinner), all knew who the bad guys were, and got off their arses to nick them. Even the sensitive Inspector Morse would never stoop to investigating a ‘hate crime’.

It’s been said before, but I’ll say it again: the police are no longer interested in anything resembling real crime. Here is the thinnest synopsis of crimes they’ve essentially given up on:

• Burglaries at odd-numbered houses
• Shoplifting under £200
• Assaults, public order offences and car crime

So ill-conceived are these ‘cost-cutting’ measures, that the lamest criminal could circumvent them. And with fewer than 1 in 100 thefts now being solved, to all intents and purposes it’s a free-for-all out there.

In lieu of a good nick, the police are devoting their energy to progressive twaddle (again, I’ll give you the bare bones):

• Checking the public’s ‘thinking’
• Arresting people who call men, ‘men’
• Making everything which isn’t a crime a ‘hate crime’
• Allowing male rapists to record their gender as female

All the while driving rainbow cars, sporting high heels, and the latest colours from Maybelline, naturally.

So when deputy chief of Cheshire Police, Julie Cooke, popped up on social media last week to proudly proclaim the police were turning their attention to pronoun abuse, she should have been dismissed. Instead, she’ll probably get a promotion. Here is what she said:

Today is International Pronouns Day, which is a day particularly important to people who identify as transgender or gender-nonconforming. Being misgendered can have a huge impact on somebody, and their personal well-being. It also can be used as a form of abuse for somebody, and that just isn’t right. Today is about raising awareness, getting people to have conversations, and understanding why it is so important to understand the pronouns that somebody wishes to be used for them.

As easy as it is to dismiss Cooke as a silly old constable, the fact that the woman remains in post, promoting whimsy over genuine, let alone serious crime, shows how far the liberal canker has spread.

There comes a tipping point surely, where the public must realise the game is up: not only are they paying for an unresponsive emergency service, but one whose sole remit appears to be frustrating and undermining, rather than protecting and serving.

It was marvellous therefore, in the face of London’s paralysed law enforcement, to see the public roll up their sleeves and get the job done themselves: an early bath for Extinction Rebellion as commuters decided enough was enough, and little Egbert’s protest would have to play second fiddle to their 6am journey in an overpriced sardine can.

They may just be onto something. The common man may be better off calling time on the Old Bill, and making his own security arrangements.

And while the notion of a two-tier police force is clearly fraught with dangers, to all intents and purposes we already have such a system. The great irony of those beating the diversity drum is that they never allow themselves access to its benefits. And as if the 24-hour security systems of Chelsea and Kensington are not safe enough, the well-heeled are already employing private police forces.

It’s self-evident that we need more police, but numbers alone are no longer policing’s biggest problem. We could go a long way to solving the nation’s law enforcement woes by cutting out the progressive nonsense, and getting back to basic, common-sense policing: Bobbies on the beat, pursuing genuine crimes, and consigning hurt feelings to daytime TV.

Until such time as the police realign with the public interest, I suggest you consult your latest council tax bill, and consider whether the policing charge could not be put to better use – I understand the boys from Canning Town come at a decent price…