Tony Blair, Morality and Riots

Have been reading Tony Blair commenting in the Guardian/Observer on the causes of the riots and the moral breakdown of society everyone is saying was behind them. The comments on an interesting article are worth a read, as it shows people up badly in some cases, and how divisive Blair was as PM. Some still saying blood on his hands etc. I was going to tweet a couple of points but I'll go on too long for that so I'll throw them in here. I'm not going to try to argue for how you resolve the situation, I don't know and I don't claim to know. But it is not a simple answer. He does talk some sense in here, and I think he's right that we're not in the grip of a general "Moral Decline" but some things did irritate me about the piece.

First point that annoyed me was this one:

The police are under huge pressure. If they go in hard, they fear inquiry, disciplinary action and abuse. It's all very well to say that they should just follow the rules. The police need to know they have strong support from politicians and public. When the riots first occurred, they would have been naturally anxious as to how heavy to be....But my experience with the police is they need 100% backing. 

All very well, generally we will support an honest police force, but at least part of the problems have been caused by the fact some police have appeared corrupt and prejudiced, or at least not entirely honest with what they do, this loses them respect and how can you give carte blanche backing to an organisation that appears untrustworthy? If you don't trust the lawkeepers, or the lawmakers (politicians) who are part of the same issue, how can you give them 100% backing. Saying if the police go in hard. What is he suggesting they do? Go in and beat the shit out of various rioters? Is that what you really want, the police as a better armed gang on the streets during a riot? Don't think that will solve any problems, just create more. If the police don't follow the rules, do you think everyone else is going to?


I'm not going to say anything about the society part and the people he calls outside the social mainstream. I simply don't know enough about it, although I don't entirely agree with what he says there, and there's no reason given as to why people are outside the social mainstream, you can't blame it on immigration and people not integrating, if you don't welcome people and allow them to integrate how can they become part of our society?

The last part of this article also annoyed a little, basically he's saying that he'd worked out the solution to all these problems, but no-one followed it through. To me this reads as massively egotistical. Politicians generally do have fairly sizeable egos, the successful ones anyway, but to say if you'd listened to me it would all be fine?  If I was still PM there would be no problems? Nonsense. Blair did some good things, or his government did at least, including the minimum wage, and also some bad things, including bending over backwards for George W Bush. But to say you have all the answers, if only they'd have listened to me? Sorry, don't buy it.