Crime has fallen, but some visible crime has increased
In the Labour Party's calendar, last week was "small boats week", said Andrew Grice in The Independent. Faced with polls showing that immigration has overtaken the NHS as the biggest concern among voters after the cost of living, and Reform UK's ever-growing lead, the government put out a flurry of announcements, designed to show that it is tackling the problem. These included new laws to stop gangs using social media to promote Channel crossings; a plan to speed up the processing of asylum claims, and so reduce the backlog of people stuck in the system, unable to work and being accommodated at taxpayers' expense; and the launch of the government's trial "one in, one out" agreement with France.
A big problem with that last strategy is its name, said Dan Hodges in the Daily Mail – which is "brilliant". Pithy and memorable, it encapsulates the government's resolve to get a grip on the "small boats crisis". And when the trial ends in 11 months, voters will surely remember it – and be angry that a scheme called "one in, one out" has ended up being more like "35,000 in, 2,000 out". Labour deserves praise for getting Paris to agree to do something about the tens of thousands of migrants arriving on our shores each year; but this scheme is expected to lead to 50 people being deported a week, set against the 800 on average that arrive. Potential migrants won't worry that they'll be sent straight back if they make the journey, so they will keep coming.
It won't work immediately, said John Rentoul in The Independent. But if the trial shows that it's feasible to detain Channel migrants, overcome their legal appeals, and send them back to France, then just maybe Paris will allow 80% to be returned – and that would destroy the business model of the gangs. But it will take time. Labour has already been in power for a year, and the numbers of crossings are still rising. "No wonder Nigel Farage carries all before him." If the Reform leader is to be believed, Labour isn't only failing to curb illegal migration; it's presiding over "societal collapse", said John Harris in The Guardian. All summer, Farage has been beating a drum about Britain's descent into a lawless dystopia, and parts of the right-wing press have amplified that message. The Telegraph, once a "byword for the political stiff upper lip", has delivered a stream of warnings such as "Britain is lurching towards civil war, and nobody knows how to stop it".
Farage's strategy is a familiar one: by persuading voters that Britain is broken, he hopes to convince them that only the hardline policies of his "untested party" can fix it. And many Tories are now peddling the same insidious line. Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick has been among those using demonstrably misleading statistics to play up fears that Britain is in the midst of a migrant-driven crime wave. Make no mistake, the grooming gangs scandal has created real anxiety about the safety of women and girls; but it's "nauseating" to see senior politicians warning that this country is at risk of going up in flames, while throwing matches on to the kindling.
Polls show that a great many Britons are ready to believe Farage's vision of a "lawless Britain", said Fraser Nelson in The Times, yet the figures don't back it up. Britain is far safer than it was 30 years ago. Over a period of huge inward migration, most crime has fallen by about 90%. NHS data indicates that violent assaults requiring hospital treatment are down by nearly a half. The trouble is, some very visible crimes, such as shoplifting, have surged. Meanwhile, on social media, where most people get their news, many accounts are doing very good business by reporting extensively on a few particularly horrible crimes. So though people feel safer on their own streets, they still think things are going to the dogs – and are not persuaded when the government tells them otherwise.
This perception gap, said Nelson, applies not just to crime, but to a range of issues: London's air is of course polluted, but even before Ulez, it was purer than it had been in recorded history. Similarly, for all the justified anger about sewage discharges into our waterways, that is by no means a new problem – and some major rivers, including the Mersey and the Thames, are notably cleaner than they were 40 years ago. As for the NHS, yes it seems in perpetual crisis, but cancer survival rates are overall hugely improved. It's no bad thing that we simply bank such gains, and want more: discontent is the "engine of human progress" and we should keep pushing. It's a scandal that living standards are lower than in 2008; too many young men are arriving here in small boats. It's right to demand better, agreed Hugo Rifkind in The Times. But not to claim that our cities have turned into scary Gotham-like "hellzones". It's not true, and the likes of Farage know it. Do they hate Britain so much that they wish it were?
