As the early 1980s is recreated before our eyes, we now have a fully-fledged retro riot.
Various Conservative commentators have been tweeting and blogging away about this today, including Nile
Gardiner on the Telegraph blog and Iain Dale.
They are right to warn against a knee-jerk reaction to the situation in Tottenham today. Clearly these riots were not caused by Tory cuts, which have only just begun to bite on the ground. There is certainly an argument that many of the cuts in services in Haringey are the result of mismanagement by a notoriously dysfunctional Labour council.
But David Cameron needs to show some leadership here. Having admitted that there is such a thing as society, it will not be possible to distance himself from this tragedy. Haringey is a microcosm of our divided society, with the wealth of Highgate and Muswell Hill (Guardian country) in the west divided from the poverty of Tottenham and Wood Green in the east.
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