Only a British Rudy Giuliani can rescue the Tories in London

Our road was closed last July so that pipes could be installed underground, a mundane bureaucratic procedure that, for my children, led to the most memorable summer of their lives. For weeks they played in the street with friends while our front door was left open, strangers instinctively smiling at kids being able to run around with the freedom of the city. It felt so much like the 1950s that I thought about sending my eight-year-old down to the shops to buy me some Woodbines. We even organised a street party but – predictably – the great British rain god rose up in anger and stopped it. Just five minutes away our high street more resembles 1980s New York.

The local area Facebook group some time ago became a daily litany of woe chronicling the muggings and bag-snatchings committed by north London’s tireless moped gangs. Customers in coffee shops threatened with knives or hammers for their laptops; mothers mugged in suburban streets after dropping off children at school; a man stabbed in the chest by a gang of teenagers in broad daylight for no reason.