We’re deluding ourselves about gang violence

Hey, Londoners — been stabbed or shot yet this week? Just thought I’d check as the place seems to resemble, in its violence, downtown Mogadishu right now — and indeed is graced with many of the same kinds of people. That’s probably why you haven’t been stabbed or shot yet: the murdering has been committed exclusively, so far as I can tell, within the minority ethnic communities by young men who are either immigrants or the children of immigrants. So you’re safe for a while, until they’ve all been used up and the stabby shooty young men get around to you.

Given this demographic, you might be surprised that the campaigning organisation Black Lives Matter UK has been silent about this epidemic, leading many of us to suspect that BLMUK thinks black lives matter only when whitey is doing the killing and that otherwise it’s nothing to write home about. But by the same token, the rest of us have not become too animated, have we? Our city’s murder rate so far has overtaken that of New York’s and is approaching Detroit’s.