Things Can Only Get Better

Abstract

By early 1993, John Major’s government was on the ropes. Weakened by the narrowest of electoral victories in 1992, the Conservatives knew that they had to do something radical to assuage the public concern generated by the Bulger case. On 21 February 1993, Kenneth Clarke, who was now Home Secretary, told the Sunday Times that in future, persistent and serious offenders under 15 would be ‘locked up’. He urged fellow MPs to ‘catch up with the mood of the people’ and attacked ‘laggard police authorities’. On the inside pages, John Major, in one of the rhetorical flourishes for which he was renowned, laid the blame at the door of ‘parents, the church and opinion generally for failing to disapprove of criminal behaviour’. He called for a ‘crusade against crime’, declaiming that ‘society needs to condemn a little more and understand a little less’. The following day, Education Secretary John Patten announced a £10m. clampdown on truancy. ‘Show me a persistent young truant’ he roared, ‘and I will show you a young criminal.’

Contemporary politics is similarly constrained by an unacknowledged impossibility. Tony Blair and Bill Clinton make minor changes to the style and presentation of public life but leave unanswered broader questions of how society should be governed … genuine political action is virtually impossible now because capitalism has won the ideological war and nobody is seriously questioning its values or rules. But just like postmodern culture persuades itself that it lives in an age of freedom so politicians mask their limitations with a facade of energetic political activity.

(Slavoj Zizeck 1998)

We will deliver on our pledge on court delays, just as we are cutting class sizes, reducing waiting lists, helping young people off benefit and into work and building a platform for long term growth and prosperity. We will work tirelessly to build the modern and fairer society that Express readers want.

(‘How we’re fighting teenage tearaways’, Tony Blair, Sunday Express, 7/3/99)