A brief trip back to my native Britain the other week was a depressing experience.
There has been widespread rioting in cities across England following the murder of three young girls in Southport at a Taylor Swift dance class.
A large number of Brits, I think it is fair to say, are extremely agitated about uncontrolled (often illegal) immigration. Tens of thousands of migrants have been allowed to flood into the country on small dinghies from France. One in 27 people now living in Britain arrived in the past two years. Four in 10 foreign-born people in Britain have arrived in the past decade.
There is a palpable sense that nothing in Britain runs the way it should, least of all the criminal justice system.
The number of recorded rapes in England and Wales in 2023-24 was three times higher than in 2013-14. A recent investigation discovered that across much of the country, the police had not identified a single suspect for neighborhood crimes over the previous three years. Only a few weeks before the unrest erupted, the authorities announced that even violent offenders would be released from prison after serving a mere 40 percent of their sentences.
Then came the riots, and the authorities suddenly discovered that it is possible to arrest and prosecute criminals after all. Prosecutions that would normally take months to come to court were undertaken within a few days. That, plus the return of British rain, seems to have dampened the spirits of the troublemakers.
Instead of clamping down on........