The Only Thing You Actually Need to Read About the Riots

Three cheers for Bagehot for this superb post on the Guardian/LSE’s abject justification for inquiry into this summer’s riots. Mr Rennie puts it exceedingly well:

Now, put me in many contexts, and I am quite the hand-wringing bourgeois liberal. Watching Newsnight yesterday evening, I fear I came over all Judge Dredd.

The researcher’s contention, in a nutshell, is that the rioters were not criminals who ran amok for a few days in August, losing their moral compass when they realised their actions would probably be without legal consequences. Instead, we are asked to believe, they are angry young people who hate the police and believe that they were taking revenge on a heartless world.

The problem is that after wading through screeds of interviews, and watching the interviews on Newsnight, it is clear that the question is not one of either/or. The rioters interviewed come across as criminals with a faulty moral compass who ran amok and hate the police.

Newsnight devoted a long chunk of airtime to Daniel, a young man who was held up as a key piece of evidence that the riots were not about looting and mindless violence.