A Tory MP and former minister has launched a plan to make Britain “vaguely civilised again” – including a national ban on playing music out loud on all public transport.
Neil O’Brien, who represents Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, also called for a “crackdown on spitting”, which he said had become “endemic” in parts of London and a ban on bikes and e-scooters being ridden on pavements.
Mr O’Brien, who served as levelling up minister from 2021 to 2022, said he believed “one of the most under-discussed and under-appreciated things in politics is the unrealised desire of most British people to live in a civilised, orderly society”.
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But he said Britain had slid into “disorder”, arguing that people had become “used to crimes that would once have been news for months: kids stabbed on the way to school, killings carried out by children, and more”.
“Violent disorder grows out of lower level disorder,” he said.
He criticised politicians of all stripes for failing to deliver a civilised society “in my lifetime”, with both the left and right “culpable” for “disorder” setting in.
In an article on Substack, Mr O’Brien, who has pushed for tougher sentencing for offenders, said his party “cut police numbers then restored them; lost prison officers, then rehired less experienced ones; and we didn’t deal with the prolific offenders who cause so much misery”.
He said the Conservatives also failed to deliver on things it promised in opposition, such as upgrading prisons and creating more capacity.
And he added: “We sometimes adopted the worst ideas of the left, like a mistaken crackdown on stop and search in 2014.”
This year, a landmark report by the Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales, Baroness Newlove, found a failure by police and local councils to respond to the one million incidents of anti-social behaviour recorded every year by police.
The report found two-thirds of people (63%) who reported anti-social behaviour said their problem had not been resolved.
Labour say they will bring in “respect orders” that would ban persistent street drinkers, drug users or shoplifters from town centres in a bid to tackle anti-social behaviour.
Turning his fire on Labour, Mr O’Brien said he “did not believe for one second” the party now in government “has what it takes to make this country more orderly”.
Mr O’Brien said they had a “different set of problems which stop them from tackling disorder”, including a prisons minister – James Timpson – “who thinks only a third of prisoners should be in jail”.
Mr Timpson told Channel 4 News in February that custodial sentences are “not always the right thing for people”, with a third of inmates “who probably shouldn’t be there” and need support relating to mental health issues and another third “mainly women” where prison is “putting them back in the offending cycle”.
But Mr O’Brien argued: “The Starmerite, human-rightsy version of the left is far too quick to tolerate dangerous behaviour if perpetrators can tell some sort of social justice or racial justice sob story.”
As well as noise on public transport, Mr O’Brien also singled out graffiti as a pressing issue, arguing there should be a “national push to clean up all the graffiti in the country, catch more of those who do it, and give them more serious sentences”.
He also called for a “galvanising national goal to reduce the amount of litter”, more action from councils to deal with fly-tipping and a “push for hotspot policing everywhere and a shift from reactive to preventative policing”.
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Mr O’Brien argued that although “many sensible centrist types” could see disorder affected the worst-off in society, there was nevertheless a “block” in tackling it.
“I think the idea of doing things that would make Britain more orderly is just regarded as uncool, cringey or naff,” he wrote.
“Instead, today’s elites still valorise people like Banksy, whose work is painfully obvious and trite. Perhaps things will change once the Starmer Generation retire.”
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