(The Guardian, newspaper website, UK)Theresa May has dismissed claims that an increase in police numbers will help solve knife crime, insisting there is “no direct correlation” between the two.
Theresa May apparently means that the reduction in UK police numbers (due to cuts in government funding over the last several years) did not (and does not) lead to an increase in knife crime.
In my view, by saying there is "no direct correlation", she is actually saying that reduction in police numbers won't produce reduced knife crime, and that increases in police numbers won't produce increases in knife crime. But that is definitely not what she meant.
Her quoted statement has attracted lots of media attention, but taken literally should be unremarkable.
Or are there multiple (and opposite) meanings to "direct correlation"?