Somebody Do Something

Despite the remarkable affinity of England's rioters with coalition policy - take a messy situation and turn it into a vague excuse for creating a messier one - various members of the Conservative Party, from the Home Secretary down to the leader of the Labour Party, have been holding forth on the need for a response to the rabble. The London Haystack, which never met a bandwagon it couldn't flop onto, has been urging the Government to re-think its cuts to the police force, presumably on the grounds that in the midst of so much policy disorder one more U-turn shouldn't be too much of a problem. The Government intends to impose "efficiency savings" of fifteen per cent, not counting bonuses from News International, over the next two years, while proclaiming as usual that any pain which is felt will be all in our minds. Nevertheless, the Home Secretary did indulge in a moment of dark wit on Radio Four's The World at One when she stated that the cuts would enable police "to be using the sort of resources that we have seen used in the last few days" and to such salutary effect.