Riots: a Tory PM must always deliver peace and order

Charles Moore has an interesting comment piece in the Telegraph looking at the position of David Cameron and as a Tory PM and th need to deliver peace and order - nice old traditional Conservative building blocks [Click here].. Interesting in terms of the core executive and the PM’s style [e.g. Cameron heading straight to ‘Cobra’ and been seen to take charge etc.), but also of use to looking at the ideological dimensions of how society should be structured and issues of cohesion and interference.

A useful quote: Politicians love saying that they give the police “everything they need to do their job”. But what they need most is to win, and they cannot win if our leaders do not defend and advance their right to the controlled use of force. People watching the television throughout these events have often been dismayed to see the police hanging back. The terrible fate of the Reeves five-generation family furniture business in Croydon, burnt to the ground, was visible proof of Edmund Burke’s dictum that “rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation and foresight can build up in a hundred years”. If the emergency services had managed to get to the Reeves emporium half an hour earlier, it would still be standing.