In Saturday’s Guardian, former British prime minister Tony Blair wrote an op-ed, in which he dismissed David Cameron’s rhetoric about a “broken society” and argued that, when it comes to the recent riots:

the big cause is the group of young, alienated, disaffected youth who are outside the social mainstream and who live in a culture at odds with any canons of proper behaviour. And here’s where I don’t agree with much of the commentary. In my experience, they are an absolutely specific problem that requires deeply specific solutions.
The left says they’re victims of social deprivation, the right says they need to take personal responsibility for their actions; both just miss the point. A conventional social programme won’t help them; neither – on their own – will tougher penalties.
The key is to understand that they aren’t symptomatic of society at large. Failure to get this leads to a completely muddle-headed analysis.
Britain, as a whole, is not in the grip of some general “moral decline”. I see young graduates struggling to find work today and persevering against all the odds. I see young people engaged as volunteers in the work I do in Africa, and in inter-faith projects. I meet youngsters who are from highly disadvantaged backgrounds where my Sports Foundation works in the north-east and I would say that today’s generation is a) more respectable b) more responsible and c) more hard-working than mine was. The true face of Britain is not the tiny minority that looted, but the large majority that came out afterwards to help clean up.

The problem with this analysis is not that it is untrue per se, but that it defines “moral decline” too narrowly, only applying it to the rioters and those whose behavior is most obvious. As I noted recently, the silent majority is already fed up with those who behave in the manner we saw over the course of the riots, and most people in Britain wouldn’t dream of setting fire to buildings or looting or assaulting people in the street. But there is a general sqeamishness when it comes to reacting to the people who do act up. This in itself constitutes a moral crisis. Blair is right when he argues that those “who are outside the social mainstream and who live in a culture at odds with any canons of proper behaviour” need treating as such, but he seems to imply that the British public and the state’s inability effectively to address them are distinct from one another. Sure, the police need to re-establish a presence in dangerous areas like Moss Side and Aston, where they have all but given up, and the social services need to see these people for what they are, but they need public support to do so. Blair actually concedes this:

The police are under huge pressure. If they go in hard, they fear inquiry, disciplinary action and abuse. It’s all very well to say that they should just follow the rules. The police need to know they have strong support from politicians and public. When the riots first occurred, they would have been naturally anxious as to how heavy to be. Once they saw the country behind them, they rallied.

That the police took so long to get that support — and then only on the basis that they promised not to employ much force — works against Mr. Blair’s argument, not in favor. The rioters are indeed a member of an underclass, and a discrete one at that. But it is ludicrous to suggest that the rest of society cannot bring them into line and defend and renew its civilization should it want to. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that the British public is not yet ready to do this, and that is the greatest moral decline of all.