Here’s a novel idea: the police should be policing violence against women. Who knew?!

Tackling violence against women and girls should be as much of a priority as countering terrorism, a police watchdog has said.

Really? You mean women and girls matter? I think that’s pushing the envelope a little too far, don’t you?

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) called for “fundamental cross-system change” after identifying continuing failings.

Three-quarters of domestic abuse cases are closed early without the suspect being charged, its report said.

Because it’s personal. A man’s right to get violent with the nearest woman is sacred.

According to official statistics, in the year ending March 2020 there were:

• An estimated 1.6 million female victims of domestic abuse in England and Wales

• 618,000 female victims of sexual assault

• 892,000 female victims of stalking

Is the BBC kink-shaming?

Zoe Billingham, HM Inspector of Constabulary, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that police had “vastly improved” their response to tackling violence against women and girls in the last seven years.

But she warned we would not be able to “police our way out of the the breadth and depth of crimes being inflicted on women, day in, day out”.

There needs to be an “uplift in the prioritisation” of violence against women and girls, with a “bold and radical whole system approach”, she added.

How can that happen when the police are so busy validating men who say they are women, and arresting women who say men are not women? How can it happen when the entire population is being systematically trained to not give a shit about women?

Refuge, a charity providing support for women and children experiencing domestic violence, said for too long there had been a failure to implement recommendations that would improve how violence against women and girls (VAWG) is tackled.

Step one: don’t let men take that support for themselves, no matter how they “identify.”

Assistant Commissioner Louisa Rolfe, the National Police Chiefs’ Council leader on violence, said the report set out a “clear way forward” for change and that there was “no lack of commitment” for this work.

She insisted that forces were recognising violence against women and girls as a “significant priority”, adding that chief constables were signing up to a national violence against women and girls strategy and a co-ordinator would be employed to to ensure the report’s recommendations were implemented.

But they’re also signing up to a national men are women if they say they are strategy, so that can get in the way. If they arrest a man for violence against a woman and the man says he’s a woman…what then?