Britain is broken, David Cameron tells us, and of course he claims a Conservative government will mend it.
How can we tell if he’s right?
Crime is still a problem, certain crimes in particular. But – like pretty much every western nation – the UK has seen a big fall in crime since the ’90s.
Having grown sharply through the Thatcher years, crime peaked in the UK in 1995 and has been falling since – quickly at first and more slowly in recent years, but still falling.
So not crime in general.
Cameron raised the horrific case of two young boys tortured in Doncaster, relating it to the Bulger case in 1993.
Two such incidents in sixteen years are tragedies for those involved, but surely not proof that an entire nation of 60 million people is “broken”.
And, if it were, surely Britain under the Tories – Britain in 1993, Britain after 14 year of Conservative rule, the Britain of Jamie Bulger’s murder – has a greater claim to be broken than the nation today.
In the past, Cameron’s also mentioned teenage pregnancy rates as a symptom of Broken Britain, so maybe it’s that?
The only problem is that they’ve been falling too. True, they’re higher than those of most other European countries, but they’re lower than they were under the Tories.
It isn’t that this country has no problems – of course it does. In many areas there are big problems with crime and anti-social behaviour – as a local councillor I spend a good deal of my time working with a whole variety of agencies to resolve them, and more, and better targetted, funding is desperately needed in many cases.
The real difficulty for the Tories is that Cameron seems to have no idea what the real problems are, nor how to tackle them. He resorts to broad-brush sound-bites and, of course, if he hasn’t identified the problem, he’s not likely to have much luck with the solution.
The problem isn’t “Broken Britain”. Most people, most of the time, are benefitting from that drop in crime across the western world. When we’re asked about our own personal experiences of crime (rather than what we’ve read in the newspaper or heard about second or third hand), most of us thankfully report experiencing a good deal less than people did under the Tories.
The problem isn’t a society in need of being engineered by a patrician Tory government. True, it’s far from perfect, but the vast majority of us don’t need David Cameron to tell us how to live our lives.
Rather it’s a lot of smaller problems. Anti-social behaviour from small groups of people leading to their victims living lives of fear. Crimes in certain areas, often committed by small numbers of prolific criminals. Particular areas with high unemployment and little hope.
None of this lends itself to one-size-fits-all Whitehall-knows-best fixes. None of it will be solved by having unmarried people subsidising those who’ve tied the knot.
Local power, local action and local understanding can make a difference – but that doesn’t fit the Tory narrative.
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9 Comments
‘Was Britain more broken under the Tories?’
No
No? Hmmm… 30 towns and cities experienced riots in the streets over the poll tax. Inflation rose to nearly 20 per cent. Unemploytment topped two million. Waiting lists for NHS treatment hit new records. Local government was emasculated as more decisision making was centralised at Whitehall than any previous socialist government…the Liberals called for a referendum over Maastrict, but the Tories were keen to sign up regardless…
Nope…you could be right…
It’s too soon to tell.
Debt is a pull forward of future spending, we can see from the numbers that government is going to get worse as it runs out of money, we have no idea exactly how bad things will be though. AND if Brown gets his way the low point will be when the tories are in power.
I was thinking today (whilst bundling newspapers with the headline ‘Massive NHS Cuts’) that most of the campaigns we are currently running round here against the Labour Government are exactly the same as the ones we were running 13 years ago against the Tory Government.
And if the Tories running Oxfordshire are anything to go by (halve the Youth Service budget, anyone?) they haven’t changed much.
Cameron’s use of the Doncaster case to demonstrate a thesis about the state of British society is utterly pathetic. It’s cheap, headline-grabbing, bandwaggon-jumping, content-free windbaggery. There will always be rare extreme acts by individuals which shock society by virtue of their rarity. Looking at the true state of British society presents a picture far too complex for a newspaper headline or a snazzy slogan for a set of policies.
What most people need is order in their lives achieveable by a secure job and housing they know they can keep. Not luxury in either, but security.
It was the Conservative government of 1979 onwards which destroyed this for many people. They ignored the long-term social costs of running down industry, leaving people insecure dependent on casual work or benefit. They pulled a fast one on housing – the right-to-buy was good for those who already tenants, but was storing up trouble for the next generation. They introduced this idea that we should all live in a spiv society, be little entrepreneurs constantly making deals, moving from this to that, motivated by the urge to make a personal profit. Fine for some – particularly those at the top with a big wealth cushin if things go wrong, and contacts to help them make things go right. They engineered the finance system for industry so that it would become ever more centralised in a few hands, who had no loyalty to the workers they were ultimately responsible for, or even any loyalty for this country and its people. So, ultimately, what this country was turned into was a site for a few thousand people to play financial games and live lives of unbelievable luxury on their mansion-a-year slary and bonuses, while everyone else had just to fit in as they could. If it was the whim of these people to throw thousands out of their job, or to destroy something of great value and a source of community stability, then they would do it.
Cameron promotes marriage – yes, but his party is responsible for destroying that social order of which marriage was a part. He can’t see that because he comes from a stinking rich background, he is totally ignorant of how ordinary people live. He just cannot see how Thatcherite Conservatism carried on by New Labour has caused what he now observes as the “broken society”.
Don’t want to sound rude but could we have some links to statistics that back up the fall in crime and teen pregnancy rates with details of how they have been measured? It’s very easy to say that crime has dropped/risen but just by changing what is classified as a criminal offence you can easily make things look better.
I also appreciate the fact that Cameron described this case as a one of (or something like that) and then uses it to make a general statement about Britain being broken! Which is it’? An exception or an example!
Chris,
There are two principle ways crime is measured in the UK: the British Crime Survey and reported crime. The first asks around 40,000 people each year about their personal experiences of crime, so isn’t affected by changes in statistics. Reported crime is, as you say, affected by the way its recorded and defined, and changes over the last 12 years have made some figures higher and some lower – but the statisticians can adjust for those changes pretty well.
As you’d expect, the BCS and reported crime aren’t exactly in step, but both show the same clear downward trend from 1995 onwards.
Teenage pregnancy is pretty easy to measure and the definition doesn’t change much! It turns out that, both in the UK and US, teenage pregnancy peaked in the 1950s and 1960s and have been falling gradually since.
Some links for you:
http://bit.ly/4AuwvJ
http://bit.ly/6wQctu
http://bit.ly/4vZ99B
http://bit.ly/5tbvGt
http://bit.ly/6Yixvo
Enjoy!
Thank you very much Iain very useful