The most depressing number in Britain right now is not the national debt, small boat arrivals, the IQ of Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, or the price of a train ticket, though all four make one want to emigrate into a compost bin. It is 43. 

According to a recent YouGov survey, just 43 per cent of adults in Great Britain have confidence in their nation’s police. This is a tragedy. The British policeman was one of our noblest soft-power inventions. He was unarmed, faintly comic, yet morally reassuring. He had a helmet, a notebook, and he knew the location of the post office. Other countries had bristling polizei, with menacing riot kit. We had Dixon of Dock Green. Now all that is gone, and it means a hoary old European joke needs rewriting. 

The genius of Jason Arday

Jason Arday and the terrible truth about students

What has happened to Ricky Gervais?

You surely know the one I mean: ‘Heaven is where the British are the police, the Germans the mechanics, the French are the chefs, the Italians the lovers, and it is all organised by the Swiss. Hell is where the British are the chefs, the French the mechanics, the Germans the police, the Swiss the lovers, and it is all organised by the Italians.’ 

As you can see, this is somewhat outdated. Allow me to revamp it, country by country. Start with Britain. If we now have the police force from Hell, and we do – ask Henry Nowak, or thousands of white British girls from Telford to........

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