Decline is a process, not a moment...
Authored by Sam Bidwell: There is an old — and rather grotesque — fable about the best way to boil a frog. Turn up the temperature too quickly, and the agile amphibian will simply hop out of the pot — but turn up the temperature gradually, and the frog won’t even realise that it’s being boiled until it’s too late. Though science has conclusively proven that this old wives’ tale isn’t actually true, it nevertheless serves as a useful case study for how quickly we can become inoculated against challenging or unpleasant circumstances.
Much
like our froggy friends, the British people are being gradually induced
into a dangerous “new normal”, in which criminality, disorder, and
personal tragedy are part and parcel of life in this country.
As a result of our failed policies on crime, immigration, and
integration over the past thirty years, we have gradually transitioned
from one of the world’s safest societies to a country in which
criminality is the norm. There is a risk that the public becomes used to
this new reality, and stops expecting politicians to address the root
causes of disorder.
Rather than reacting to the slow drip-feed of news stories on an individual basis, it can be informative to step back and take a holistic view. In just the past few weeks, the headlines have been dominated by events which, in the aggregate, point to a precipitous decline in public order.
On July 11th, the new Labour government announced that 5,000 prisoners would be released early, in order to ease prison overcrowding. On July 15th, reports emerged that London’s once-great Metropolitan Police had failed to solve a single burglary, phone theft, or car theft in 166 London neighbourhoods over the past three years.
