Matthew Parris on feral Britain...

It is simply pointless to suppose that lectures by MPs, schoolteachers or the Archbishop of Canterbury on the importance of fathers, of family discipline, of personal responsibility, or whatever, will have an impact on (or even be heard by) brutalised juvenile gangsters. The Left is wrong to think that state handouts will do the trick, the Right is wrong to think that punishment can do more than contain the problem; and all of us are wrong to think we can achieve much by "addressing the issues" or "starting a debate" - ie talking about it.

I've come to believe that Iain Duncan Smith's interest in the social policy equivalent of keyhole surgery - estate by estate, family by family, gang by gang, street by street, problem by problem, task force by task force, church by church and charity by charity - may bear more fruit; but it will be slow, expensive, messy and deeply unsensational. So will the concentration of resources on educational wastelands that Michael Gove's "pupil premium" implies.

He finishes by imploring Cameron not to knee-jerk to the right as a result of the riots -

There exists today a nascent Tea Party tendency in the Tory party. Its nostrils sniff the smoke in the wind. It senses it's moment may have come. I doubt this. The cheers of the Right are heady stuff, and can become addictive; but, like all addictions, they lure a statesman towards his destruction. Mr Cameron knows that he won by getting away from all that. His new friends hope he is now turning his back on huskies, hoodies and hoodlums. He mustn't. In today's applause lies tomorrow's danger.

Matthew Parris on the Coalition...

Politics is not about hope, but expectation. Economics is not about dreams, but plans. For most of the people, most of the time, the geography of the future is not about broad sunlit uplands; it's about the puddles before their feet and the gradient of the next hill. The false prophets of modern marketing have warped more than the language of politics through their obsession with the "vision thing": they have skewed the polls by asking the wrong question. Ask what they expect you can do. It is on that latter request you will be judged says Matthew Parris. Call me complacent, but I don't think that the Coalition has to do much to win again, beyond maintaining a unified front and appearing strong. The worst things get, the less it needs to do. None of this is good news for the rest of us, of course - but happy summer holidays, Messrs Cameron, Osborne and Clegg.

Parris on LibDems...

If (the LibDems) had joined Labour in a Lib-Lab Coalition, they'd now be having the mirror-image row with supporters who objected to propping up Labour. There's a reason for this tiresome symmetry. If you run a party that strives to attract disaffected supporters from Left and Right, you're forced to leave you're overall compass blurred. In opposition, this will maximise your vote; in government it will maximise the sense of betrayal felt by your supporters and MPs writes Matthew Parris in today's Times.

Today's articles...

Three really good pieces in today's papers from Peter Oborne (on the chilling prospects of Ed Miliband as the invisible Labour leader), Charles Moore (how the Eurosceptic analysis was proved right all along) and Matthew Parris (in praise of the courageous Nick Clegg) in the Times(£). Well worth reading.

The IFS cannot weigh

In a queue for an expensive lung operation, it would be 'unfair' to put a penniless, jobless and incorrigible chain-smoker ahead of a hard-working young mother who had never smoked - although on the IFS calculation the decision would be 'progressive' because it redistributes income from a richer to a poorer one writes Matthew Parris in his Times column.

“Fairness” is not a morally neutral term, but depends on our idea of deserving. What we think people do or don’t deserve depends on our own ethical framework. Such judgement require us to weigh conflicting claims in the scales of justice. Which way the scales tip depends on how much weight you accord to what you place in them. The IFS cannot help us with that, for though it can count, it cannot weigh. How much weight you accord is a moral question, whose answer depends entirely on your own values. And values differ.

Well worth a read.