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It's being so cheerful as keeps them going. The Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Grayling says parts of Britain are indistinguishable from The Wire, the blood-soaked cop drama set among the lowlife of Baltimore.
"A horrendous portrayal of the collapse of civilised life," Mr Grayling says gravely. That is, of course, precisely why so many of us have turned into addicts, hoarding episodes for a spare evening when we can gorge on the best TV police drama since - well, since ever.
Don't take it from me. Sam Cameron agrees. According to her husband, she likes nothing better than to stay in watching Jimmy McNulty, Brother Mouzone and Avon Barksdale locked in mortal combat, with a plate of pasta on her lap.
You can never entirely trust a politician in charge of a telly reference.
Mr Grayling says The Wire "used to be just a work of fiction" to British viewers, whereas "under this Government, The Wire has become a part of life in this country, too".
Well, if you say so. For a start, The Wire hasn't been around that long and it's doubtful whether Sam or anyone else counting the bodies over their pesto thinks immediately: "Gosh, that so reminds me of life in a British inner city."
The point about The Wire is that it is a universal drama, although set in the particular world of "the Corner" in a drugs-stricken part of the city so famous for its homicide rate that it's known as "Bodymore, Murderland".
Even allowing for shadow ministers trying to make a splash in the summer months, Mr Grayling is pushing his luck with the comparison and must take care that his fearful predictions don't end up as bathetic.
For a start, Baltimore's murder rate is colossal. Britain's, though nothing to be proud of, is not, even in comparison with other European countries, let alone the ghettos in US inner cities.
All opposition parties like to raise fears and suggest that society has fallen into the gutter under the leadership of the other lot.
Tony Blair used the national revulsion at the death of James Bulger as the peg for his message that Tory Britain had gone to the dogs.
Mr Grayling emerges with the (unsurprising) message that the evil nexus of gun, knife and drug crime destroys young lives.
But the Conservatives "Broken Britain" message has its risks, which is why even senior Tories are divided about it.
Mr Cameron started out as the leader talking of "sunlit" uplands and a sense of relief after the puritan style of Mr Brown. Well, times are tougher and the rhetoric must reflect that fact.
Britain is not a broken society, and I feel irked at being told by the Cameronians that it is. It's a varied one, fearful of its fall from relative prosperity and in need of a better education and welfare system to change the lives of the poorest.
What we need is confidence and national purpose, not misery-wallowing. The cases of Stephen Lawrence, Damilola Taylor, Sharon Matthews and Baby P graphically remind us that an underclass exists - impervious to the attempts of the welfare and education systems to reach it - in which young lives are betrayed or brutally ended.
Where the Conservatives do have a point is in saying that the entire social security and welfare architecture has failed to make inroads here.
Chancellor Brown considered these areas to be so much his fiefdom that he blocked the appointment of Frank Field in favour of installing his protégé Harriet Harman.
Only with his late conversion to the more radical figure of James Purnell as Welfare Secretary did Mr Brown change course towards a "tougher love" approach.
Now Mr Purnell has gone and the less innovative figure of Peter Hain occupies the post.
So no clear strategy is discernible. Mr Grayling agrees largely with the Purnell approach: which is to allow fewer exceptions to the requirement that work is an expected part of life, even for the poor.
Expect a re-run of the rows over disability exemptions, single mothers and, if the Tories are as brave as they suggest, a more fierce assault on housing benefit than Labour has dared.
Camp Cameron is stuck here between competing objectives: they must prepare the public for a time when improvements will be slow and belts tight.
At the same time, they are sensitive to the charge that they stand for very little - so they herald a revolution in schools, whereas the likelihood is incremental improvement.
Even more difficult is welfare and crime - unless the achievements are to be quick-fix symbolic ones.
"One thing we want to avoid," says a member of the Cameron team, "is chasing initiatives that are really just short-term gimmicks.
"David has learned enough from Blair's record to see through that."
Crime, and the fear of it, are two areas that Mr Grayling, warming up for the job of Home Secretary, clearly wants to use as an election tool.
His boss wants more locally accountable police chiefs to ensure that the public get the presence of officers on the streets and the priorities they value.
But The Wire (and the real experience of its writer) doesn't support his case: the endless entanglements of politics and policing, which make the series gripping, end up exacerbated by localism in action.
Personally, I am inclined to give the Cameron approach a go. But that takes us into areas where the Opposition message is still vague.
In the third series, the hamstrung police chiefs decide to eschew the official policy of a drug clampdown on the grounds that the drugs squad can never win a war governed by supply and demand.
They allow the street dealers to set up in their own mini-Amsterdam instead, containing the problem rather than claiming it can be eradicated.
That doesn't go well either. The message is that the fight of the public authorities against poverty, drug culture and violence is unending, and the rewards limited.
Blighted parts of the country need attention from the Conservatives; on that, Chris "the Grouch" Grayling is surely right. But Britain isn't Baltimore. Watch with care, Brother G.
Reader views (8)
I agree with Anne. We do have some major problems that us, this, and previous Governments have failed to deal with, but they are nowhere near as large as some parts of the US or other countries. We seem to have a real bad habit of doing down this country just as much as our governments have done.
Politicians like Chris Grayling do not help dooming this country at every opportunity just to score political points. I wonder if Mr Grayling has actually visited Baltimore. There are probably more bodies showing up in the middle-class Midsomer Murders TV show than my local street. I will add I recall a US visitor many years ago laughed at media suggestions that Brixton was "like a ghetto". He said it was paradise compared to Brooklyn, New York at the time. While I agree that many problems here have got worse, it still is nothing like a TV show or a real life Baltimore.
- Mrmugambo, London, England, 26/08/2009 17:34
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Well said Anne. As the first comments on your piece show, we are all too willing to go overboard with the condemnation of our society. It takes a lot more effort to spread confidence and national purpose.
- Jonathan, London, 26/08/2009 14:30
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Anne, dumpUK is a reality show in living colour - The Wire is the fiction. Grayling is spot on. Get out more.
- Ted, London, 26/08/2009 13:45
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We are indeed a broken society; the fact that things may not yet be as bad as Baltimore is irrelevant. We are going in the same direction and that direction needs to be changed. We need to stop indulging people's dysfunctional family choices and look instead at how we can raise children who contribute to society instead of destroying it. We may shudder at the harshness of the Victorian age but it had its benefits to the wider society. For example, mothers like Karen Matthews and Tracey Connelly would have been in the workhouse, not swigging vodka and poncing off the state.
- Margret Geraghty, Bath, 26/08/2009 13:40
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When David Cameron talks about our broken society, is he not referring to family life and the dysfunctional units that have flourished under Labour? The present government has refused to support the traditional two-parent family unit, choosing instead to throw money at single parents without even looking at ways to discourage the rise of teenage mothers.
- Nick Stone, Bath, England, 26/08/2009 13:26
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The Conservitive party seems to be attacking the people of the UK again in thier efforts to get into power.
I remmber the '90's under a comservitive Gov'.
It was worse and there's no reason to think they will do any better if they get into power
- James, Swansea,UK, 26/08/2009 13:08
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Thats right. There is no crime when you have a personal bodyguard and NHS treatment that gives next day service.
Or is it just me that doesn't get that service?
- Tim, Camborne, Cornwall, 26/08/2009 13:01
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If this isn't a 'broken society', I most certainly don't want to witness the true version...
Great Britain... where the only thing 'Great' is the taxes, crime and incompetence...
- Andre, london, 26/08/2009 11:40
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