The conservative appeal of drug gangs

According to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick, the easing of lock-down will be accompanied by a rise in crime in the capital, including the violent type associated with drug gangs. Just last week, the police recovered two zombie knives, two Rambo-style blades and a kitchen knife at the scene of an attack on a 16-year-old boy in Brixton. But it would be wrong to view this coming crimewave as a problem that just affects London’s underclass. According to Sheldon Thomas, the chief executive of an outreach organisation called Gangsline, a rising number of middle-class teenagers are being sucked into the gangster lifestyle in the wake of Covid.

Thomas rather uncharitably attributes this to ‘the phenomenon of loveless middle-class homes’. The teenage children of white-collar workers, he says, having been confined to barracks for the best part of a year, now realise their parents ‘tolerate rather than like them’. In an interview with the Telegraph, he suggested the tight-knit communities of county lines drug gangs become surrogate families for these love-starved teens.