Boris Johnson is right to talk tough on crime. But can he deliver?

Remember #rorywalks? This was the hashtag created to follow the progress of Tory leadership candidate Rory Stewart as he travelled around Britain meeting people in places detached from mainstream politics. One encounter that sticks in my mind happened when he met a couple from east London, who told him that they wouldn’t start a family because their local area was too unsafe to bring a child into the world.

Whether apocryphal or not, it is clear that there are parts of Britain where criminality and incivility has become normal, battering the morale of our most vulnerable citizens. The public mood is not receptive to further ‘understanding’ of people who seem to be able to offend with impunity or the legions of experts and publicly-funded charities that dominate the airwaves endlessly contextualising and excusing appalling behaviour as a societal, rarely an individual responsibility. Labour, too, buys into this view: wannabe MP Ali Milani, who is hoping to take Boris Johnson’s seat at the next election, wrote on Twitter: ‘I saw a lot of friends pulled into crime.