Labour is in favour of direct elections to police authorities. The Lib Dems want two thirds of authority members to be elected. The Conservatives have proposed elected commissioners to oversee police forces.

“Localism” is all the rage among politicians when it comes to policing. In essence, it means making police forces more accountable and having more neighbourhood police officers.

So keen are the politicians to outdo one another that no party can brook any dissent about making the police more accountable to the voter.

Vernon Coaker, the Policing Minister, has described as “ridiculous” the idea that police authority elections might result in low turnouts and the elevation of fringe candidates to positions of influence in policing.

Mr Coaker, and his Tory and Liberal counterparts, need to wake up to reality. It is not that long ago that the people of Hartlepool elected H’Angus the monkey as their Mayor and single-issue candidates (remember Martin Bell) captured parliamentary seats on the crest of populist waves.

As for low turnouts, last month Stoke voted to get rid of its elected Mayor in a vote that saw a 19 per cent turnout. And on Thursday night the BNP won its latest council seat on Boston Borough in Lincolnshire, on a 22 per cent turnout.

The narrow focus on local issues creates another dangerous byproduct. The political debate over policing is now narrowly confined to arguments about who is toughest on binge-drinking, antisocial behaviour and street crime. No one seems to step back and look at the big picture – the international organised crime syndicates peddling drugs, sex and guns, whose businesses fuel the local problems of burglary, car crime, prostitution and street-corner dealing.

“I would never say this publicly,” one senior police officer said recently, “but there’s never been a better time to be a trafficker. Whether you are moving people or drugs or counterfeit goods, our focus is not there.”

That focus needs to shift. Locally accountable policing is important, but if anything is “ridiculous” it is political posturing that ranks stealing mobile phones on a par with gun-running.

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