Is Britain really going to the dogs?

Fraser Nelson has raised eyebrows this week after an article pointing out that, if you look at the crime statistics, things really aren’t so bad. The tag line of his Times article reads “The populist narrative of a migrant-driven crimewave is catnip on social media and oil to the wheels of Reform. But it is so far from the truth that we’re in danger of losing sight of the country we live in”.

Nelson asserts "our streets have seldom, if ever, been safer". He further asserts "The gap between the public debate and reality becomes so wide that many voters may no longer see the country they actually live in, or recognise the real progress that’s been made. It becomes impossible to believe what the facts do seem to suggest: that our society, for all its faults, is probably safer, richer and better than any before it".

He makes the case that this is supported by data, and that the public perception is wrong - and that perception is driven by populist manipulation and doom-scrolling. He says "I’d also argue not just that the streets are safer but that, in general, this is probably the best time to be alive. That is to say: if you could choose any era to live in Britain, but not your place in society, you’d choose right now".

This is a straw man argument. Anguish about crime is legitimate even if there is less of it. It’s the nature of modern crime that should and does concern us. This week there’s a major debate about the explosion of shoplifting which in recent years has effectively been decriminalised. When you let the small things slide, you set a dangerous precedent. The thought also occurs that discourse about shoplifting is misframed. There are five basic types of shop theft.

1. The desperate (lifting one or two things they actually need - and feeling bad about it).

2. The low level criminal - who takes what they can get away with because they just don't want to pay .

3. Addicts looking to feed their habits.

4. Organised theft - usually prestige retail goods. Roma/Albanian gang crime.

5. Shop looting - usually blacks with a sense of entitlement.

The first three are nothing new, and they're not always "scumbags". They're people who've just made bad choices - and the normal processes of criminal justice can deal with it. The recent surge, though, is something else. It's foreigners exploiting the inherent freedoms of a high trust society. As far as they're concerned, anything not locked up in a cabinet is there for the taking, and more fool us for not locking it up. They certainly are scumbags. It's not a result of social injustice or poverty. It is a direct consequence of uncontrolled immigration.

So even if Fraser Nelson's statistics suggest crime is down, the crime we have much more insidious and more corrosive to society. When you consider the externalities of losing a high trust society, the costs are incalculable.

Moreover, crime changes. It's no use talking about the decline of household burglaries. Think about it. Circa 1995, a British living room would be littered with valuable technology. Living on the edge of a drug ravaged council estate, we had our VHS recorder stolen at least twice. But by 2008, you could buy DVD players in Tesco for £12. Fast forward to today and all that kit is built into our phones and nobody deals with cash anymore. You'd only break into someone's home if you knew exactly what you were looking for.

But guess what? Now we have an explosion of organised phone theft. Phones are not stolen because they are inherently valuable. They are stolen because the data is valuable. As such, there is a whole galaxy of crime which has moved online. Two-fifths of mobile phone thefts in Europe happen in UK according to insurance data. And why is that? Usually Roma and Albanian gangs operating in big cities. Similarly, bank robberies have declined because there are no banks anymore. But we've seen an explosion in identity theft and online scams. Again, driven by foreign gangs.

A lot of the crime that Fraser Nelson doesn't think exists is happening in plain sight. Go into any derelict town outside of the London orbit and you'll see the vape shops and Turkish barbers. That right there is the tip of the money laundering iceberg - and it's not unrelated to the industrial scale grooming of underage girls.

This lawlessness is reflected in the culture of immigrant dominated cities. Pakistani men in flash Audis park wherever they like. Ordinary little bylaws are flouted and ignored. They've got used to the idea that they can do virtually anything they want without consequence or punishment. And they're right, they can. The police quietly decriminalized organised crime. There was no looming sense of deterrence that prevented a Pakistani scumbag from punching a female police officer in Manchester airport. That's their culture. They simply do not recognise our laws.

We should also make mention of the rising Islamic sectarianism, which is now manifesting in our politics and on the streets, to the extent that British Jews are no longer safe in Britain of all places. Weekly hate marches in every major city.

Meanwhile, the good life is being eroded for everyone else, particularly for the law abiding. If it isn't security tags on bottles of grog and beef steaks, it's the armoured glass at the counter in Surrey village shops. It's the constant CCTV surveillance and the feeling that you can't drive through a London suburb without risking a £30 fine dropping on your doormat the very next day. We can expect any petty infraction or mistweet to be enforced to the maximum while dangerous criminals and paedophiles walk free - and the judges see no problem with this.

This all contributes to how people feel. Regardless of Fraser Nelson's statistics, it didn't used to be like this. Life used to be better. Britain is more divided, segregated and surveilled than ever. The only reason, statistically, I'm less at risk of urban crime because I simply do not go into urban areas. There's is no cause to, and I wouldn't want to. There is nothing visually appealing about "diverse" areas.

And there's one crime, perhaps among the most serious, that most certainly is going up, to the extent that the government has no accurate data on it at all. Illegal immigration. It is poisoning the well. It has shredded the social contract. Violent crime in the statistics may be down, but random third worlders going on machete rampages, slaughtering children and raping women to death, is something that never happened when I was a kid. Inter-ethnic violence and looting is also a newish development.

As such, the negative perception is not the time old grumble of the weary British public that the country is "going to the dogs". It very much is going to the dogs in dangerous and urgent ways.

In the mind of Fraser Nelson, life has never been better and all is well. But it's not just a question of crime. In the last few months we've seen steel works, refineries, chemical plants, farms, shops and schools begin to close. I believe this has serious and dangerous consequences. Economic decline begets crime, addiction and racial strife.

All of this is symptomatic of a collapsing state where the ruling class has wildly different values and priorities. This is unsustainable. A doomsday clock of sorts is quietly ticking in the background. Most of us perceive it. It may not show up in any statistics that Nelson is looking at but it's there all the same. Britain is nosier, dirtier, more crowded, less civil, less trusting, less patient, more grasping, more suspicious, and uneasy about the future.

The slide towards populism is not as Nelson would have it. It is not that ordinary people have been worked up into a lather by cynical doomsayers. If anything, the likes of Farage and Reform are behind the curve - trailing public opinion rather than leading it. That's a common mistake for establishment hacks. We do not take our cues from politicas or the media. We're the ones living in the squalor they create. If Fraser Nelson thinks the true picture of Britain is to be found thumbing through official crime statistics, then he’s away with the fairies.