5 days ago
We're not going to the dogs: 12 reasons why Britain remains the greatest place to live
How nice to see JD Vance and his young family enjoying the glories of the English countryside, assuming they are able to see it beyond the phalanx of Secret Service agents and motorcade vehicles that accompany America's leaders.
The vice-president, his wife and three children are staying in the Cotswolds, a picture-perfect example of rural Britain and, therefore, a magnet for tourists, trippers and holidaymakers. We can only hope that Mr Vance will pass on his favourable impressions of Bourton-on-the-Water, Stow-on-the-Wold and the other timeless villages to his fellow countrymen and women who appear to be under the impression that this country is a broken reed, a crime-infested basket-case to be avoided at all costs.
He will be delighted to discover that Lower and Upper Slaughter are not blood-drenched hellholes but beautiful, honey-coloured hamlets named after the old English for muddy place, or slough.
It is astonishing to learn that residents of Chicago are expressing their concerns about visiting London because of fears for their safety even though the murder rate in their home city is 20 times higher. At least we don't have to put troops on the streets to deal with crime as Donald Trump just has in Washington DC, or not yet anyway.
True, there has been a spate of phone thefts in London's West End, which could be dealt with by a greater police presence both to deter and catch the crooks red-handed.
Often these crimes are committed by small groups and are mitigated when the perpetrators are put behind bars. The same is true of burglaries. If they were properly investigated rather than being routinely ignored by the police the handful of offenders could be banged up and the predation would decline.
There is a view being advanced, presumably for political reasons, that crime is at unprecedented levels when this is not the case. It may well have gone up in the past year or two but historically it is actually low. In fact, falling crime was one of the few success stories to which the Conservatives could point during their 14 years in office as, indeed, they did in their election manifesto last year.
'Under the Conservatives, violent crime has fallen by 44 per cent since 2010 and neighbourhood crime is down 48 per cent,' it said. 'Reoffending has fallen from over 30 per cent in 2010 to 25 per cent. We have recruited 20,000 police officers, delivered 6,000 prison places as part of the largest prison expansion since the Victorian era and deported over 18,000 foreign national offenders since 2019 alone.'
Why are the Tories not shouting this from the rooftops rather than lending weight, even by their silence, to Reform's claims that we are being submerged by a crime wave? The high-point for both recorded and perceived (through the British Crime Survey) levels of offending was in 1993.
At the time, an already shaky Tory government was hammered in the polls and a young Labour home affairs spokesman called Tony Blair managed to steal the law-and-order mantle that had previously been the exclusive property of the Conservatives.
Ken Clarke, considered too soft in the Home Office, was moved – albeit in a promotion to the Treasury – and his place taken by a hard-liner, Michael Howard. He proceeded to undo his predecessor's reforms, toughened up sentencing and prison numbers began to rise. They are twice as high today as 30 years ago.
But from that moment crime began to fall. There are several reasons for this but one is a higher incarceration rate. If crime is on the increase once again it is because the people who commit most offences are being let out onto the streets after serving just a fraction of their sentences.
Nonetheless, the idea that the country – or London, for that matter – is more crime ridden now than back then is a myth perpetrated either by a wilful misreading of the statistics or a failure of memory. Knife crime may be up but it is mostly confined to gangland areas. Across the country, stabbing-related hospitalisations are lower than before the pandemic. Gun crime is minuscule.
Since it is August and many of us have, like the Vances, been holidaying in Britain, let us take a moment to praise its wonders rather than damn its shortcomings. Lists are all the rage nowadays, so here are 12 reasons to be cheerful about Britain.
In view of the miseries currently being endured by many millions in other parts of the world, we should pause occasionally and put our own experiences into some sort of perspective.
This country still is, to quote its greatest writer, a blessed plot and a precious stone set in a silver sea.
For those like the Vances still away on holiday in Britain, enjoy it while you can. Soon, the leaves will start to turn and the politicians will be back at Westminster to mess things up again.
