“Drugs are appalling.” Rishi Sunak was explaining his crime plans to voters in Essex. Unusually in the pattern of recent Conservative prime ministers, these were plans to fight crimes, rather than commit them.

It’s an established fact that making a drug illegal means no one uses it any more

Followers of politics may have noticed that the Tories are having what might almost be described as a “moment” right now. Sunak has rebranded himself as “Captain Competent”.  Some polls have placed them within 15 points of Labour. Everywhere there’s talk of comeback. Objectively, this is pretty wishful stuff, but you can understand where it’s coming from: the plane is no longer plunging directly towards the ground, and the new pilot seems to have achieved something approaching straight and level flight. Some of the passengers dare to hope that perhaps they’ll survive a bumpy landing. It would be a shame to tell them about the mountain range ahead.

It tells you a lot about how bad things had got for the party that a leader who can launch a “crime week” without finding himself arrested is treated as a political mastermind. It is also quite revealing that “voters don’t like being mugged” counts as a profound insight.

The specific crime wave that the government has decided to crack down on is laughing gas, a drug so dangerous that it’s given to women during childbirth. We are assured that this will mean an end to the blight of tiny silver cannisters littering parks, because it’s an established fact that making a drug illegal means no one uses it any more.

Even before Sunak stood up on Monday, however, there were detectable signs that not everything was going quite as well for the Conservatives as some of their fans were telling themselves.

Essex isn’t happy

For a start, the person sent out on Sunday to sell the drugs crackdown was Michael Gove. Now, Gove is jolly good at the Sunday shows, the kind of man who can pull off a comically long pause when asked to name Nicola Sturgeon’s greatest achievement. He was probably a safer choice than the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, who tends to struggle with any interviewers to the left of GB News. But still, in an ideal world your anti-drugs spokesman wouldn’t be someone who famously admitted snorting cocaine.

Challenged about this on Sky News, Gove explained that he’d learned from his own past. “It’s a mistake – worse than a mistake – to regard drug-taking as somehow acceptable,” he said. But this isn’t really an answer. Pretty clearly the greatest immediate harm any teenager will come to from inhaling laughing gas is a drugs conviction that will follow them for the rest of their life. This is, of course, a consequence that Gove himself escaped despite using significantly more serious narcotics at a point when he was considered sufficiently mature to write leader columns for The Times.

But the bigger problem with the crackdown became clear as Sunak tried to sell it to the voters of Essex. “How do you go about reporting antisocial behaviour and shoplifting?” came the first audience question. “Have you ever tried that non-emergency phone number? It’s the most frustrating thing in the world.” Police, it will come as no news to anyone, are not fantastically interested in investigating minor crimes.

His Winchester drawl morphed into a strange kind of mockney

The prime minister laughed nervously. “That is a very good point,” he said. And to be fair he’s taken it on board. The government, he revealed, is going to roll out an app so that you no longer have to wait on hold with the cops. In the future, they’ll be able to use the latest digital tools to ignore crime reports.

As the questions rolled on, it became clear that Essex isn’t happy. “Conservatives have dropped the ball a little bit, to be honest,” said one man. “It’s all well and good talking about laughing gas, but that is the least of your problems.” He was more worried about discarded needles. “I’ve reported this, nothing happens.”

For Sunak, it was so nerve-wracking that his Winchester drawl morphed into a strange kind of mockney, in his anxiety to agree with his audience. They were right, he told them again and again. But, he explained, nitrous oxide is a gateway drug.

It’s the old, old story: first you’re snapping open a little canister in the park, then you’re making a pompous speech to the Oxford Union, and before you know it, you’re on the Expressway to Hell: a regular slot on The Moral Maze, and the final ruin that is a seat in the Cabinet.

Hang on, maybe that’s cocaine. Whichever, it’s appalling.