John Harris, the Guardian journalist, responded brilliantly to the Sun’s headline today that revealed defence secretary Gavin Williamson was considering calling in the troops to deal with the current epidemic in knife crime. “With what?” he asked. “Tanks?” This is the level of political discourse in our country today, where an actual secretary of state addresses a terrible situation with all the gravitas of Private Pike from Dad’s Army.
I am sure that the causes of knife crime are many and complex and the massive cuts to police funding is unquestionably one of the major ones. Another thing is that do we really expect the current generation of politicians to resolve them? I can’t say I do.
The prime minister herself, Theresa May, presided over the home office from 2010 until she ascended to Number Ten and was directly responsible for cutting police numbers, cuts that have continued apace since she was elevated way above her level of competence and ability. Her garbled assertion that there was no correlation between police cuts to dramatic increases in knife crime are frankly absurd, particularly now that senior police officers have told her that she is wrong. After all, she is a typical scheming, lying politician. Senior police officers are, generally speaking, committed to upholding the law and telling the truth. I know who I believe. So, what do senior politicians do? They call summit meetings.
I know a thing or two about summit meetings since sometime around the new millennium I was selected to attend a summit concerning benefit fraud in Richmond House, London, chaired by the secretary of state for social security Alistair Darling, a summit called because there were growing concerns around the country, and especially in the Sun and Daily Mail, that benefit fraud was out of control. I had only been in the fraud department for a few months but I was happy to represent my area, not least to see what a national summit looked like.
To be fair to Mr Darling, he was extremely switched on and knew his subject. There was a presentation, a Q&A where various people from the fraud investigation service made their pitches and a summary at the end, which we were told would form the basis of the report that followed and the subsequent actions that took place. I was really impressed that a government had finally asked those who ran the fraud service and did the investigating were being asked to express their ideas. I was not impressed, nor entirely surprised, when, once the benefit fraud headlines had slipped away, things went on as before. This, I fear, is precisely what will happen with the issue of knife crime.
We can certainly expect an inquiry, a few more summits, some of which will be chaired by the prime minister and then what? They’ll probably adjust the methodology by which knife crime statistics are compiled and a year later announce how the authorities are on top of things and knife crime is falling. You don’t think they will do that? Well, every government I ever served under the DWP did exactly that by pretending to ‘crack down’ on benefit fraud, when they were doing no such thing. Why not do it for knife crime? The politicians, emboldened by the lies that bought Brexit, will suspect that people will believe anything they say. Just say knife crime is falling and people will believe it’s true.
I don’t expect to see tanks rumbling through the crack-infested estates of our cities, nor squadrons of SAS men swooping in on helicopters onto the ugly tower blocks of the 1960s. In fact, I don’t see anything at all, other than words followed by more words.
More coppers, reversing cuts to youth services, better education and so much more. But mainly hope. As leader of the opposition, David Cameron always talked about Broken Britain. At the time, he spoke in cliche and soundbite. Now, in 2019, Britain really is broken and divided in every way imaginable. I wish I had some hope that things, as in 1997, could only get better. Sadly, inequality feeds inequality and, as the consequences of our fateful decision in 2016 to leave Europe, things can only get worse worse. Situation hopeless.
