Violent Crime: Not One Solution and Not In The Centre

Everybody is shocked at the wave of street killings in London so far in 2018. The natural reaction is to find a single cause and someone or something to blame; too little stop and search, too few police on the streets and so on. The truth is more complex than the soundbite can articulate.

Eight years of austerity has driven increasing deprivation in poor areas. Cuts in funding of programmes designed to give young people a better start if they come from under privileged homes has definitely added to the problems. Cuts in police budgets, driving hundreds of officers off the streets, has certainly been a factor, whatever excuses the government offers. Abuse of stop and search powers was certainly once a problem, but stopping them almost entirely creates another problem.

An education system which delivers an academic rather than a skills based outcome, is a driver of spectacular youth unemployment in poorer communities. Above all the head in the sand approach to drugs, which has established a major industry run by organised crime and criminal street gangs, that has become in some areas the main, if not the only, economic activity is very much at the heart of it all. Perhaps there are two fundamentals which have to be set right before any of the other issues can be tackled with success. There has to be a drive to equip parents with the skills to bring up a family without getting into trouble and we have to find a better level of practical politics which fixes problems rather than pedals ideology.

But this blog does not believe that some new centrist grouping or party will be the answer. The centre is always favoured by those with the fewest problems because it is by nature moderate and soft. After eight years of Tory led government with a catastrophic record across a wide range of social issues and economic consequences, it is time to move far to the Left. Only the Left, with all its hard edges, has the drive and will to sweep away the evils in our midst and establish a fairer economic and social settlement. When that’s done a nice soft centre can tidy up the details.