Due to much stricter controls on the sales of firearms in the UK, we haven’t had the same problem with shootings and mass killings as witnessed in the USA. But while all the energy of government has been sucked into the impasses of Brexit, we suddenly find ourselves confronted with another kind of national emergency – a dramatic increase in cases of knife crime involving children or teenagers.
What is happening here? There seems to be enough evidence to suggest that the rise in the figures for deaths by stabbing and prosecution for possession of deadly weapons in the course of recent years can be set against the drastic cuts to social and public services implemented during the decade of austerity following the financial crisis.
Perhaps predictably, our Prime Minister, Theresa May, has been quick to deny that there is any direct correlation between cuts to police funding and the rise in any particular forms of crime. But then she would say that, given that she was herself the person who, in her previous role as Home Secretary, made time to introduce swinging cuts to police funding while drawing up her plans for the Hostile Environment Policy on illegal immigration.
