Britain is a bad place to be law-abiding and decent
The state’s power is turned against the honest citizen, while violent criminals are allowed to run amok
The American venture capitalist Marc Andreessen once observed that living in California was like living in late Rome: a civilisation flourishing on the surface, but one where “the roads are becoming unsafe and nobody is quite sure why”.
It’s uncomfortably familiar. Britain is not exactly descending into lawlessness; on the contrary, laws continue to be passed and sometimes even enforced. But there is a sense that something is slipping out of control.
A set of stories from the past week draws this out. In the first, a young father confronted a man using drugs and loitering near a children’s play park. His reward for this act of public service was to be brutally murdered. His killer has been convicted and is now awaiting sentencing.
No length of time in prison will bring a dead father back, but a long sentence for a murderer might stop other children losing theirs. Studies around the world have shown that a small minority of repeat offenders are responsible for a staggering share of violent crime. Here, however, even criminals who are known to be “high risk” are being released early to fight overcrowding.
Others may never be arrested at all. The idea of police patrols as a deterrent – providing the sort of public service the murdered man needed – now appears to be an historical oddity, and it is dispiritingly common for crimes to be reported, filed, and then ignored by forces far too overstretched to deal with lower-level offending.
Even when they do intervene, they all too often find that the law, or at least the judges interpreting it, will take a different view. An officer who arrested a woman during a row over fare evasion has been found guilty of assault. For obvious reasons, the police, in turn, are losing confidence in their ability to actually carry out their jobs.
Of course, for those living in London, we have an almost weekly demonstration of a world in which the police have practically given up. Nearly every weekend, the streets of the capital are taken over by protests that proclaim their support for Hamas and Islamism while officers watch on.
The new report by Lord Walney on policing protests, and its suggestions for protecting democracy, is all well and good, but the High Court has just unpicked some of the few tools the police already had.
Taken in isolation, these stories are dispiriting. In combination, they offer a bleak pattern. Britain’s authorities are abandoning the honest, the law-abiding and the decent to the consequences of decay. But as power slips from the state, it often turns what little it has left against that same law-abiding group.
The pattern repeats across the board. Enter the country illegally, with nothing to offer it, or even pose an active threat to it, and you can expect to watch as the legal system bends over backwards to find a way to maintain your presence here, while the taxpayer funds your accommodation.
Marry a foreign spouse, or work in a highly paid role for a company that then goes bankrupt, however, and watch as the Home Office puts you through hell.
Work hard to provide a roof and prosperous lifestyle for your children, and the state will confiscate an ever larger share of your income to fund those who choose to raise their families reliant upon government largesse.
The British state is increasingly incapable of fulfilling its most basic functions of preserving public order, maintaining the roads, and enforcing the law. Its survival seems to be based less on competence or moral legitimacy than on its ability to keep the naturally law-abiding in line, even as others run free.
This, ultimately, is the core of the issue. The state can manage some disorder so long as everyone else plays along. It finds ways to route around it, avoiding major clashes and the sudden shift of narrative that would result from seeing just how deep the rot has set in. And it relies upon the compliance of the decent majority, without which it would topple overnight.
The result is an absurd twisting of virtue, where criminals are fearless and the law binds only the lawful. The meek may well inherit the earth, but here and now Britain is being handed to the despicable.