Blaming Andrew Tate for a rise in violence against women is a cop-out

According to senior police officers, the UK is facing an ‘epidemic’ of violence against women and girls (VAWG). Every day, the police record 3,000 such offences and as many as one in 12 women are victims of VAWG-related crimes each year. These offences now reportedly account for 20 per cent of all police-recorded crimes, an increase of 37 per cent compared with the period of 2018 to 2023.

This crisis is apparently so severe that, last month, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and the College of Policing (CoP) issued a joint statement, in which deputy chief constable Maggie Blyth argued that VAWG has become a ‘national emergency’. To combat this, the NPCC and CoP are incorporating the ‘Four P’s’ – protect, pursue, prevent and prepare – into their new policing approach. For context, this is the same method used by forces to fight terrorism, child sexual abuse and modern slavery.

The raw figures and the joint statement both make for distressing reading. The picture they paint of modern Britain is one of a misogynistic, dystopian hellscape – a place where women run the gauntlet every time they leave the house. For Blythe, the root cause of this ‘national emergency’ is not poor policing or a failure of government, but an alleged trend of online influencers – such as Andrew Tate – radicalising boys into ‘extreme misogyny’.

Unsurprisingly, the reality is a little more complicated. Take the NPCC’s Violence Against Women and Girls National Policing Statement 2024, published earlier this month, which lists off the disquieting statistics around VAWG. However, looking at what counts as VAWG, it is clear that the parameters are wider than you might expect.

There are a number of separate behaviours that can constitute VAWG, ranging from femicide and sexual assault to sexual harassment. Sexual harassment can encompass ‘any unwanted sexual behaviour that makes someone feel upset, scared, offended or humiliated’. Of course, such behaviour should not be tolerated, but this definition is open to such widespread interpretation that it becomes essentially meaningless. It can be applied to anything from domestic abuse within a relationship to staring at someone for too long on the London Underground, which is clearly not the kind of behaviour most people imagine when they hear the word ‘violence’.

Throughout the VAWG National Policing Statement, the deadly and the disagreeable are regularly conflated. Scant regard is also paid to the fact that some of the trends are down to increased reporting, rather than just a straightforward rise in VAWG. More and more victims of rape, for example, are reporting their experiences to the police. This rise in public confidence in the police is a positive step, but should not be mistaken for an actual rise in crime.

Why has the NPCC and the CoP published such distressing figures with little or no context around them? And why are senior officers at least partly blaming the rise of VAWG on internet influencers? The CoP’s embrace of woke politics could be partially responsible. But there are other reasons, too.

The Metropolitan Police’s first VAWG Action Plan emerged at the end of 2023, the same year that police officer David Carrick received 36 life sentences for rape and sexual assault. The plan was published not long after the Met announced they were investigating a number of officers for misconduct, relating to the poor handling of reports about Carrick.

The plan also followed the Charing Cross Police Station scandal in 2022, when investigations found evidence of misogyny, harassment and bullying involving officers at the branch. It also came only a few years after what is perhaps the most notorious recent case of police criminality – the horrific kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard by Met officer Wayne Couzens in 2021. A cynic might say that senior police chiefs’ obsession with the likes of Tate is simply a way of deflecting attention from the Met’s questionable record in handling misogyny within its own ranks.

What’s more, the ‘national emergency’ narrative quietly avoids the much more fundamental problem of declining police strength. Recent recruitment drives, combined with record numbers of police officers quitting, mean that a higher number of inexperienced officers are coming through to the ‘front line’. Close to 38 per cent of officers now hold less than five years’ experience on the beat. This has led in part to the woefully small number of successful prosecutions for sexual offences. Even as reports of rape increased, the number of convictions fell by 60 per cent between 2016 and 2020.

Violence against women and girls must be addressed, but there is no ‘epidemic’ or ‘national emergency’ of it in the UK. These labels will only make women feel needlessly fearful, while demonising men. The real problem here is the police’s woeful failure to tackle crime. This has nothing to do with the rantings of a few misogynistic clowns on the internet.

Paul Chapel is the pen name of a serving British police officer.