No everything is not fine (even if overall crime has fallen)

Saying that everything is fine when it plainly isn’t, even if we start with an objective look at rates of crime, merely fuels the idea that our political and media elite is completely out-of-touch

There is a conflicted narrative in Britain between those, like Fraser Nelson, who think everything is getting better and those, like Matt Goodwin, who think everything is getting worse. In a Times essay and some to camera comment Nelson cites overall crime levels, reductions in road deaths and declines in greenhouse gas emissions as illustrative of how everything is getting better. And Fraser tells us (mostly correctly) that Britain is a brilliant country and there’s never been a better time to live in it.

The problem, however, isn’t that Nelson is wrong but rather that his argument seems to reflect the comfortable rather than the marginalised, the middle classes not the working class, and people who can avoid the crowded streets and bad driving of Britain’s worst places. It is indeed true that overall levels of crime in Britain, and especially violent crime, are significantly lower than they were in the mid-1990s and criticising the best longitudinal measure of crime (the England & Wales Crime Survey) because it is based on the opinions of victims which is what Matt Goodwin and Nigel Farage have done strikes me as a crazy disregard for the best data available on levels of crime and its impact on actual people.

Part of the answer lies in another exaggerated take on the condition of Britain coined by Tom Jones in The Critic; “The South Africanisation of Britain”:

“Britain is not South Africa — yet. But there is a sense that the scaffolding of a once-functional state is buckling, and the grand edifice it supports is gradually tumbling down with it, brick by brick. For those with a doomerist bent, comparisons to the Rainbow Nation’s dysfunction, division and decay feel grimly inevitable — and the parallels harder to ignore.”

The hyperbole here forms a useful balance to Fraser Nelson’s gentle boosterism and does point to one critical factor in our relationship with crime and disorder, that these problems are not evenly distributed. You can live an essentially tranquil and crime-free life if you don’t stray too far from the attractive commuter village seven miles from Bradford, where that crime and disorder (not to mention Britain’s worst drivers) really is a problem. There aren’t any gates or barriers, no armed security guards keeping the hordes of rapacious Bradfordians out of Cullingworth, but those things Nelson remarks upon - to be fair I don’t give much of a toss for the climate change stuff - are largely true for us fortunate residents.

But despite the truth about crime where I live, people really don’t believe that crime rates are falling and many are convinced it is rising rapidly. This disjuncture between reality and perceptions exists because of anecdotal evidence provided by those we trust (friends, family, neighbours). We all have a story of anti-social behaviour, crime and dangerous driving and we all, on the, now fewer, occasions when we visit a place such as Bradford we see the shuttered shops, the evidence of drug abuse, the litter, the graffiti and the sad collapse of once nice places into decay. So when someone like Fraser Nelson pops up to tell us, from his attractive, sun-dappled living room, that it really isn’t so bad, we look to the evidence of our own eyes and the experience of friends, colleagues and family to conclude that Nelson is living in cloud cuckoo land.

Nelson’s argument is that, if politicians (he is especially critical of Robert Jenrick, which sounds a bit personal as he talks about “tribute videos to Nigel Farage”) embrace the idea that everything is getting worse then the result will be policies bad for Britain because they’re addressing a problem that doesn’t exist.

But a problem does exist. For sure it isn’t the problem that Nigel Farage, Matt Goodwin and a legion of commenters, politicians and self-appointed, often racist ‘journalists’ tell us. But it really is a problem that people are adjusting their behaviour because they fear crime, dislike the decay of urban places they once enjoyed, and are fed up with anti-social attitudes and behaviour. None of this is really because some of the criminals and the badly behaved aren’t white but because public authorities have begun to withdraw from enforcement and excuse this failure on the basis of communal politics or presumptions about class and behaviour.

There’s a sort of inertia now in responding to anti-social activity. We, along with thousands of others, enjoyed being punted along the Cam recently. All of those people saw that Magdalene Bridge, a Grade II listed structure is covered in graffiti. You wonder how long that scrawl of vandalism will remain before the council or the college authorities get round to cleaning it up? Of course, people say, this isn’t the biggest problem even in a thriving, wealthy and successful city like Cambridge but it is indicative of the manner in which the priorities of local government and the preferences of policing have changed.

When taxi drivers from Keighley turn down rides from Bradford (and I’ve met more than one who prefer not to accept these rides) you get a sense that some places really don’t fit the happy description of Britain painted by Fraser Nelson. Most of Britain, aside from the councils not looking after the physical environment as well as they once did, is not falling apart, is not witnessing a surge in crime and is a fine place to live. But push a little deeper and there are signs that things aren’t so good. Cullingworth, a low crime place, has a Co-op that locks up its steaks reinforcing the view (the one Fraser Nelson tells us is based on misinformation from Nigel Farage and Robery Jenrick) that crimes like shoplifting are rife and rising.

One response to this debate is to do what Nelson has done and dismiss those, from across the political spectrum, who try to reflect people's personal experience of crime, anti-social behaviour and the decline of urban public spaces. I’m not sure this gets us anywhere because it is quite clear that, for a variety of reasons, shoplifting has increased, opportunistic crimes like phone snatching are on the rise, and street crime generally is becoming a problem. Perhaps too we should listen to evidence from retailers:

“UK retailers are warning that crime in their stores is “spiralling out of control” with 55,000 thefts a day and violent and abusive incidents rising by 50% last year.

More than 70 incidents a day involved a weapon, according to the annual crime survey from the British Retail Consortium (BRC).

Verbal and physical attacks, violent threats, and sexual and racial abuse in shops soared to more than 2,000 incidents a day in the year to the end of last August, up from 1,300 the previous year and more than three times the 2020 level.”

These are not victimless crimes but put people who work in shops at considerable risk. I know there’s a ‘right-on’ anti-capitalist shtick that says stealing from big retailers works like a sort of tax, but the reality is that shoplifting, like the drugs business, cigarettes, disposable vapes, and migrants, is a part of the business portfolio for organised crime in Britain. And all the retailers can do is try to harden the target, hence locked freezer cabinets, caged drinks aisles and security guards at corner shops.

Saying that all of this isn’t true (and I’m absolutely sure retailers wouldn’t be locking away stock if they didn’t feel they had to) is simply the worst form of public policy response yet this is precisely what we can expect. Fraser Nelson and those, like John Rentoul, cheering him on, represent the considered view of those who sit in comfortable offices, often in their own front room, thinking great and progressive thoughts about policy and what government should do. Elsewhere people are recounting how their sister had her phone snatched on Regent Street, how awful it was having to drive in Birmingham or Bradford, and how their once thriving high street is now a desert of shuttered shops interspersed with empty hairdressers, takeaways and candy stores.

Meanwhile getting the bus or train is a dreadful experience with bad language, litter and hideous daubings on every wall all played to the sound track of tik-tok videos, facetime and loud clips of music. Bags, booted feet, dogs, and tonight's takeaway dinner occupy seats while people push and jostle to get to doors first and grab a seat that hasn’t already got someone else’s detritus dumped on it. Women report worse but the authorities think putting up stern signs is going to stop groping and worse. What’s missing is any sense of social discipline but there is also a long set of rules characterised by not ever being enforced despite us spending a lot of money on an actual public transport police force.

I wrote recently in response to a rant from Matt Goodwin (you know “London has Fallen” and other genuinely far-right tropes wrapped up in some selected statistics to present it as serious analysis) that London’s problem isn’t too many black people, levels of immigration or even the gig economy. London’s problem, and the problem for the country as a whole, is that it is very badly governed. Saying that everything is fine when it plainly isn’t, even if we start with an objective look at rates of crime, merely fuels the idea that there’s a political and media elite completely out-of-touch with the sensibilities of regular folk in Britain.