Hello and Spike Podcasts. I'm Fraser Myers and I'm here with

Spike's deputy editor and host of the Last Orders Podcasts Tom Slater.

Hello. And Spike columnist Ella Wheelen.

Hi. This week on the podcast we're taking a break from Brexit and we're going to talk instead about hate crime, Malania Trump and the word of the year.

Anecdotal evidence and some police figures suggest there's been a huge rise in cases of

racist abuse. The UN urged Britain to take action to prevent further abuse.

The month, no, the months after the Brexit votes, we had 41% rise in race.

Across the board, there's been a 17% rise in hay crime over the past year,

with over 94,000 defences recorded.

Britain is in the grip of a rising tide of hate,

particularly post Brexit.

Or at least that's how the narrative goes.

A record 94,098 incidents were recorded by police in England and Wales in the year 2017

to 2018, a rise of 17% on the last year. But other statistics tell a different story.

The Home Office's Crime Survey shows a fall in hate crime of 40% over the last decade.

So what's going on is hate crime of 40% over the last decade.

So what's going on?

Is hate crime actually on the rise?

Or do we need to take the police statistics

with a healthy dose of skepticism?

I think we do need to take these

with a healthy dose of skepticism because what's happened in relation to hate crime law and police practice in this area over recent years is that the definition has become a lot more broad the types of crime or even non-crime which is often contained within these definitions

...