All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
This afternoon’s parliamentary debate touched on the sociological issues that may have inspired the recent looting. Naturally, there are plenty of competing views on the subject, but I bring your attention to Harriet Sergeant’s, which she has expressed in the latest issue of the Spectator. Sergeant has conducted extensive investigations into the teenage gangs in London,
To the surprise of no-one the public is more concerned by crime this week than it was a week ago. Fancy that! and, equally, to the surprise of no-one, parliament was prepared to indulge any number of kneejerk nonsenses today. Hence the foolishness* about shutting down “social networking communications” during “times of unrest”. Parliament may
The police received a savaging in parliament earlier. I lost count of the number of MPs who relayed their constituents’ anger about riot police who stood by as buildings burned. Cameron’s defence – that the police response had been inadequate to adapt to a new threat posed by crime facilitated by social networking – did not allay the
Britain is in no immediate financial threat, said George Osborne in his speech to the House. It was a firm restatement of the position he established in an article for the Telegraph earlier this week. Most importantly he said, the markets look favourably on Britain’s recovering public finances and the liquidity of British banks.
I understand that the government’s view is that social housing tenants whose children live with them and are convicted of looting should be evicted from their homes. The law already allows for this, although only if the criminal act occurred within the borough in which the family lives, and the Department for Communities and Local
David Cameron’s statement to the House of Commons was clear about the circumstances that led to these riots. ‘This is not about poverty, it’s about culture. A culture that glorifies violence, shows disrespect to authority, and says everything about rights but nothing about responsibilities.’ Later in the session, he said ‘you don’t hit moral failure
I suspect that the idea that opportunistic looting can be explained by organised gangs is, no matter what the Prime Minister said this morning, a questionable premise. Nevertheless, it was interesting and encouraging to see him reference the work done by the Violence Reduction Unit at Strathclyde Police. Interesting because their approach to gang-related violence
The great traditions of journalistic hyperbole justify this magazine’s cover image this week (Subscribe!) but that doesn’t mean we must take it literally. “Britain” is not “ablaze” even if the riots we’ve seen in London, Birmingham and Manchester might make it seem as though the entire country is on fire. So a little perspective might
The recall of parliament today offers David Cameron the chance to take command of the current situation. The police might have horribly mishandled the situation on the first few nights of the riots and Cameron’s government might have been caught flat-footed by them. But he now has the opportunity to build on the successful policing
David Cameron’s convictions are best expressed in anger. Cameron exuded an air of the patrician yesterday with his righteous moral certainty. This may have made some observers squirm, but others would have seen this seething performance as the essence of leadership in crisis. Cameron is likely to sustain this tone in parliament today. He will
Meanwhile, mercifully, there’s a Test match taking place in Birmingham. The contrast between this England and that other England in the headlines these past few days is total, complete and reassuring. Which brings me to this lovely piece by Peter White on how a blind man may adore – and imagine – cricket: […] I
Storms have gathered over Angela Merkel’s summer. The FT reports that she faces a revolt in the Bundestag over the recent Greek debt deal. Some members of the Christian Democrats, her own party, and the Free Democrats, the junior partner in her governing coalition, will oppose the proposed expansion of the EFSF. Disparate political dissent has solidified
Judging by today’s YouGov polls, the riots have pushed crime sharply up the national agenda: it now ranks second, behind only the economy. In all, almost half of Brits think crime is one of the top three issues facing the country, more than double the number who said so a fortnight ago. The effect has,
For those emerging from Chalk Farm Tube station on Tuesday night, the scene was set. It’s unsettling seeing a place you know well boarded up, locked down and steeling itself for attack. Few businesses were taking risks, and their defences leant the area a taut, eerie atmosphere, like a place awaiting demolition. One elderly resident
Via Art Goldhammer, a new paper examining trends in public disorder across europe from 1919 to our own blessed unhappy time. Here’s the chart: The authors explain their methodology: “We look at five different types of instability – anti-government demonstrations, riots, assassinations, general strikes, and attempted revolutions – in Europe over the period 1919-2009. The
The Guardian’s Nick Watt already has a detailed and insightful post on last night’s Newsnight bout between Michael Gove and Harriet Harman. Here’s the video, so CoffeeHousers can watch it for themselves:
If a riot has a hundred causes then it’s caused by everything and anything and any all-purpose, universal explanation for it is bound to be implausible. When a 31 year old teacher is among the first people charged in the aftermath of the worst of the violence you can put away your handy explanations about
So far as words matter, David Cameron has just delivered one of the most forceful statements of his political career. It contained all the anger of his address yesterday, but went much further in its diagnosis. “There are pockets of our society that are not only broken, but frankly sick,” he said, adding that, “the
Wow, that was a howitzer of a performance from Boris Johnson on the Today Progamme earlier. And all his shells were aimed at Downing St. Not only did the Mayor of London slander Cameron’s Broken Society thesis, not only did he support Diane Abbott against the jibes of Tory HQ, but he also committed the
The presence of 16,000 police officers in London deterred looting, but violence spread in provincial towns across England, with tragic consequences. Riots in Birmingham left three men dead after a car ran them over; police are treating the incident as a murder. There was also disorder in Salford, Manchester, Gloucester, West Bromwich and Nottingham. Each
When the first riots hit Brixton, I was 12 years old. My mates and I came from south London council estates and, while we were no angels, we certainly couldn’t be described as bad kids. I can’t pretend that I had any real grasp on why people were rioting but I knew it was against
Last Friday I wrote a post for this blog suggesting we had a problem with our young people. Well we do now. I remember talking to Camila Batmanghelidjh of Kids Company in the aftermath of the killing of Damilola Taylor and she said she was concerned that some children in her project had become “suicidally
It was 8am this morning when I first saw Sophie and Ella’s clean-up call trending on Twitter. I duly trotted down to Clapham Junction to find the whole area wreathed in smoke and in lockdown. With only four of us there so far, and the police busily trying to restore order, there wasn’t anything we
Parliament is to be recalled on Thursday to debate the riots and the correct response to them. In the meantime, we thought we’d let CoffeeHousers have their own say:
So far as its tone went, David Cameron’s statement just now was firm and unyielding. He did express his sympathy for the victims of the riots; the emergency services, the shopkeepers, the fearful. But the major emphasis was on bringing the culprits to book. His “clear message” for the perpetrators of this destruction was that
This was what Peckham High Street looked like at about 6.45 last night. I had heard that a bus was petrol-bombed although I neither saw nor heard evidence of that. There was no confrontation between police and the public and I didn’t see any arrests. Mostly it was just a case of people standing around
It’s a gloomy sort of morning ritual, posting on the riots of the previous night. I’m sure CoffeeHousers have seen and heard the specifics already: further burning and looting in parts of London such as Ealing, Croydon and Hackney, as well as bursts of violence in Birmingham, Liverpool and elsewhere. Businesses and livelihoods have been
There we have it: David Cameron is to return to London tonight, and chair a meeting of Cobra in the morning. There was an inevitability to the decision even earlier today, with the news that both Theresa May and Boris Johnson had curtailed their own holidays. But the fact that the riots have spread —
President Assad’s tanks are still doing murder on the streets of Syrian, but the dictator’s isolation grows. After weeks of prevarication, several Gulf States have closed ranks against the Syrian regime. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait have all recalled their ambassadors from Damascus, and King Abdullah of Riyadh has led the Arab League’s condemnation of Assad’s ‘death
The question of what to do with the banks is a sore point in Westminster — and the Barclays boss Bob Diamond has just aggravated it. According to Sky’s Mark Kleinman, he suggested to a meeting of Barclays investors last week that the bank might move its headquarters away from London as a result of
As Pete has noted, George Osborne has been making headlines while braving rollercoasters in California. The chancellor’s view that the Eurozone must accept ‘the remorseless logic of monetary union that leads from a single currency to greater fiscal integration’ marks the moment when the British government began to campaign for a two-tier Europe, which would
If there’s one sentiment that defines George Osborne’s article for the Telegraph today, it’s that there is no need for us Brits to panic. The economic convulsions of the past few days, contends the Chancellor, serve to prove that the coalition was right to approach deficit reduction as it has. “The alternative of more spending
Welcome to the latest CoffeeHousers’ Wall. For those who haven’t come across the Wall before, it’s a post we put up each Monday, on which — providing your writing isn’t libellous, crammed with swearing, or offensive to common decency — you’ll be able to say whatever you like in the comments section. There is no
…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson says that Twitter covered the London riots, and watches America continuing to unravel. Peter Hoskin listens to China bearing down on the “debt-ridden” United States, and asks if the Darling Plan would have satisfied the credit rating agencies. Jonathan Jones reveals