Star comment: Ineffective Tories have to wake up
It is a scene that will be instantly recognisable for many people.
Appalling driving, either in cars or increasingly on two wheels, takes place in broad daylight on the region’s roads without a police officer in sight to intervene.
The shocking footage of youngsters on motorbikes pulling wheelies, driving in bus lanes and through red lights, could easily have ended in tragedy.
This is where cutbacks in police funding have led us. It is absolutely infuriating for drivers – especially those who have been fined or forced to attend a driving course for creeping slightly over the speed limit – to see such brazen disregard for the law on our roads.
Such behaviour not only shows contempt for the law, it also clearly demonstrates that the two-wheeled thugs have little fear of getting caught.
Even if they are arrested and put through the courts, our criminal justice system does not exactly offer much of a deterrent. Since the ascent of David Cameron, the Conservative Party has appeared to increasingly favour a policy of being soft on crime and soft on the causes of crime.
Given some of the statements from front bench ministers in recent weeks, it seems that the party has lurched so far to the left that it now resembles Tony Blair’s ‘New Labour’ project.
Conservatives such as Jacob Rees-Mogg and Daniel Hannan are now seen as the right wing of the party, even though they are merely representing its traditional values.
The Chancellor Philip Hammond, a committed Europhile Remainer, would surely have been rightly replaced by now had Theresa May achieved the majority she expected.
As it is, the party is rudderless and becoming increasingly torn apart by internal politics and backbiting.
What has all this got to do with illegal bikers terrorising our streets?
The answer to that particular problem, and many others, lies with the Conservative administration.
An effective government would not be sending £14 billion a year of our money overseas on aid projects.
Surely it is time for Mr Cameron’s vanity policy to be reviewed, enabling more funds to be made available for our police?
Once that is achieved we can then look at the rest of the malaise that surrounds our criminal justice system – and start building more prisons.
