I fear for my boy on our streets stained with blood

When confronted about the rising tide of knife crime in the capital — and what he was planning to do about it — the best the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, could come up with was that it could take ‘a generation’ to solve the problem.

It was a characteristically weak and defeatist response from a man who seems to be doing everything to exonerate himself from responsibility in this matter.

The scale and the urgency of the crisis appear to have eluded a mayor more at home posing for virtue- signalling selfies than attending to the wounds that are staining his city’s streets with the blood of its young.

Yes, this is a problem deeply rooted in inner-city crime culture — itself a legacy of decades of social and moral breakdown where the warped values of the gang have replaced those of family and community.

But that is no excuse to pass the buck. And it’s no help, either, to the grieving mother of Jay hughes, 15, stabbed to death outside a chicken shop in Lewisham last Thursday, or to Malcolm Mide-Madariola, 17, killed in Clapham last Friday, or the 16-year-old, identified as a rapper known as JaySav, who died in Tulse hill on Monday night.

It’s already too late for them. And it will be too late for those who, inevitably, and depressingly, will join the rising death toll across Britain before the year is out. These children and their parents don’t have a generation to spare, Mr Khan. They need action now. We all do.

My own son is about to turn 14. Like many his age, he walks to and from school (when children are most likely to be attacked).

I’m lucky that he’s a sensible lad and so are his friends. But I’m not deluded: I know there are gangs operating in our area. I see them all the time, openly dealing drugs in the local playground where I walk the dogs at night, zooming around on their scooters.

I know he’ll try to avoid them, but what if they don’t leave him alone?

It only takes one idiot on a dare from his mates, one fool trying to prove how much of a man he is, and my child — my precious, only boy — could become a statistic.

It’s a worry that unites us all as mothers, regardless of colour, class or creed. Long-term, many things can be done to change the toxic culture behind these deaths. Schools, communities, parents — all can play their part. But shortterm, there is only one answer: more police on our streets.

everyone understands the need to make economies in public services. But not at the expense of children’s lives. The only thing that will make parents sleep more soundly at night is the knowledge that there are men and women out there whose job it is to protect the safety of our streets — and that they have the resources and the mandate to do so.

That means not just more money for policing in inner- city areas, but more powers for the police. Specifically, a return to stop and search.

The arguments against stop and search are well-rehearsed. They centre mainly around the notion it disproportionately discriminates against certain ethnic groups, in particular young black men.

This is, of course, wholly unacceptable — and is part of the reason the Government rowed back against it during Theresa May’s time at the home Office.

BUT it is also the case that the victims of knife crime are overwhelmingly young black men. So you have to balance the concerns of liberals with that reality.

Young people are carrying knives with impunity, safe in the knowledge that there is little the diminished numbers of bobbies on the beat can do.

Already, the home Secretary, Sajid Javid, has signalled a change of direction. ‘I want officers to feel confident, trusted and supported in using stop and search, and I will be looking at ways to reduce bureaucracy and increase efficiency in the use of this power,’ he said in a speech to police chiefs in London last week. Good. now, get on with it.

Because, however unpleasant, inconvenient or humiliating it may be to be wrongly searched by the police, if it were a choice between that and losing yet another child to the knife, what sane person could possibly object?