Cameron has earned himself some points. Neither May nor Clegg appeared to have a clue, until the Prime Minister arrived back from holiday. Then the tide began to turn. His leadership, which has been tainted by u-turns and poor judgement over Coulson and Libya, is now shown in a much bolder and decisive light. We must see if he can build on his new advantage.
The Tory party feels comfortable demanding tough action on crime and looting and will be little troubled by the deeper meaning of what is going on among young people in the cities. It may demand of Osborne that he stumps up more cash for the police and he may well have to. Broadly however the Tory party is in a comfortable place in troubled times.
For Milliband and Labour things are less straightforward. Milliband did very well out of Murdoch. Those sort of dramas are full of emotional outrage and he used the gushing flow to advantage. But Murdoch is now history. Nobody cares much anymore. The riots, on the other hand, are difficult for Labour as mostly they occur in its constituencies. Their MPs have been assiduous in their condemnations and comfort and have done much to rally the non rioting majority to stand up and be counted and be seen to be counted. I suspect that this has done at least as much as the enhanced police presence to restore order.
Nevertheless the gap between Labour and its heartland is exposed. For far too long Labour under Blair and Brown has been too preoccupied with middle England, fawning the rich and pursuing, when in power, policies which favoured the City rather than the neighbourhood. Labour once spoke for the working class and rallied against exploitation and deprivation. The bright new housing estates of the fifties and sixties are now violent ghettos of the dispossessed where crime is the only economy, drugs the only product, violence the only order and lack of useful educational attainment the only birthright of those caught in this web of hopelessness.
Labour must get back to its vocation. It must once again speak for the underclass and develop socially fair polices to restore prosperity to neighbourhoods, not by doling out handfuls of benefits, but by finding means of restoring industrial and commercial activity to put life back into these under-lands. It must develop coherent polices for affordable energy, affordable housing and affordable finance. It must develop fair taxes and a sound economic policy. It must turn its back on the crackpot combination of high spend and low tax. It must turn away from its penchant for supposing that all can be dealt with by a new quango or task force.
Above all it must tackle head on the simple fact that the post Thatcher economic model is utterly shot through and spending your way out of trouble on borrowed money is to drive into ever deeper trouble. It must return to its old doctrine which said that you must take from the rich and give to the poor. The time is passed for the professions to milk the rest. There has to be not just an economic re-balancing. There has to be a social re-balancing as well.
To get a mandate for all that will be tough and well beyond the power of spin. It will demand the radicalism of Attlee or Thatcher. But if Labour will re-engage with the needy and once again become the champion of the honest, the good and the hard working majority in the country, it will find itself, once again, in a position of power to effect real change for the good, rather than suffer the utter futility of the outcome of its last spell of thirteen years in power.